One of the more juvenile, if not dangerous aspects of Mayor Sharon Tapscott’s school of financial thinking is her insistence that council’s annual financial statements do no more than reflect council’s financial position at “a moment in time”.
Any resident or ratepayer who took more than a moment to reflect on this simplistic view would recognise that the council’s Audited Annual Financial Statements represent a summary of its financial activities over a 12 month period & should not be dismissed so lightly.
Applying her philosophy to the 2016-2019 financial year, Cr Tapscott argues that council’s General Fund only fell into deficit due to the need to deduct Grants for Capital Purposes from the Operating Result & that otherwise everything would have been rosy.
Of course, what Cr Tapscott doesn’t bother to acknowledge is that the approved Operational Plan & Budget for 2018-2019 provided for a $15.15M Net Operating Surplus in the General Fund vs the $1.06M reported result, substantially the result of council having overspent its Operational Expenses budget by more than $16.0M.
Applying Cr Tapscott’s philosophy at an entity level, she argues that if it was not for the need to exclude Grants received for Capital Purposes, council would have recorded a Net Operating Surplus of $7.99M vs the $8.92M Net Operating Deficit actually reported.
Again, what Cr Tapscott conveniently fails to point out is that at a consolidated level, council Budgeted to achieve a Net Operating Surplus of $17.72M, as opposed to the $7.99M actually reported, once again conveniently ignoring council’s failure to control & rein-in its Operating Expenditure.
Council & Mayor Tapscott have persistently argued that the real problem facing council is that its Income is too low & that is why it has to overspend.
The BVSRRA would argue that this is the thinking & behaviour of a spoilt, irresponsible child & surely begs the question as to why we bother to have all our fancy financial plans if council’s intention is to simply ignore them whenever it suits them.
Not once over the life of the current council has a report been presented that clearly enunciates the alleged financial impact of the disasters on council. And yet, whenever a blunder is exposed, the first thing that council does is to try & excuse its incompetence
by blaming the impact of those disasters on its operations.
The fact of the matter is, as every resident & ratepayer in the Bega Valley understands, they cannot spend what they don’t have, unless they borrow from somewhere. What they also understand is that if they do spend beyond their means, then sooner rather than later they will lose everything they have.
The BVSRRA maintains that Cr Tapscott & her colleagues, with the exception of Crs Nadin, Bain & Allen, are misleading the community when it comes to council’s financial standing & as a result are not worthy of retaining office.
Indeed, as Cr Bain has previously pointed out, Crs McBain, Tapscott, Griff, Dodds & Seckold have all admitted that they simply do not understand council’s finances.
At the same time, at its last ordinary meeting held less than a month ago, council resolved that its general manager “did not meet expectations in the area of Finance”.
What more needs to be said?
John Richardson
Secretary/Treasurer
Bega Valley Shire Residents & Ratepayers Association
Tel: 0264945669
Email: secretary@begavalleyshireratepayers.asn.au
Website: http://www.begavalleyshireratepayers.asn.au