Cobar Shire councillor Bob Sinclair has queried Cr Peter Yench’s claim that council has $12million in reserve funds that could be spent immediately on projects such as extensions to the medical centre.
Cr Sinclair brought up the matter at last week’s council meeting when council’s balance sheet was presented.
Cr Sinclair said he was concerned by an article that appeared in last week’s Cobar Weekly (March 22 edition, Page 4, ‘Yench calls for council action on medical centre’) in which Cr Yench said council has approximately $12million in reserve to provide better services for the community.
Cr Sinclair said while council’s bank
reconciliation shows that council has almost $12M ($11,954,702) in available funds, he said Cr Yench had not clarified that approximately $10million of that was restricted funds.
Council’s restricted funds include grants, employee leave entitlements (which totalled $321,156 as of January 2017) as well as capital improvements that council has already allocated funding to.
Cr Sinclair said also not taken into account was that council still had loans owing totalling $1.6million.
“This shows how flush council really is,” Cr Sinclair said.
