Financial Sustainability

What is it?

For local government to be financially sustainable in the long term, service and infrastructure standards should be able to be maintained without dramatic rate increases or disruptive cuts to services. Northern Grampians Shire Council is unsustainable as we have consistently run operating deficits and have no means to address these matters in our long-term financial plan. Small rural councils often face challenges due to structural factors – they cover large areas, manage many assets, have low populations, with low capacity to pay with limited own source funding.

Why is it needed?

Financial sustainability is key for all councils, but is particularly relevant to the 27 small rural councils that have been determined to be unsustainable. The most compelling metric regarding sustainability is infrastructure per capita. Small rural councils have substantially higher per capita infrastructure figures, $36,000, compared with metropolitan councils, $5,000. Northern Grampians Shire’s figure is $41,000. This means that ratepayers have a disproportionally higher amount of infrastructure assets they are required to support. In addition, Northern Grampians Shire residents have a lower SEIFA score than average, meaning that they have less capacity to support the higher infrastructure renewal demands.

The ask

State Government:

• No co-contributions required for grants funding.
• Grants provided for asset renewal projects.

Federal Government:

• No co-contributions required for grants funding.
• Grants provided for asset renewal projects.
• Rate Cap increases should be inline with a Local Government cost index not a Consumer Price Index (CPI) as CPI doesn’t reflect the input costs of service delivery.

Specifications

• Location: Shire-wide
• State seat: Lowan & Ripon
• Federal seat: Mallee
• Advocacy type: Partner

• Council plan goal: Live it up: Health, wellbeing and community
• What has been done so far: 

• We continuously review our expenditure to ensure we are operating at the lowest costs and review our processes to be as efficient as possible.
• We have rationalised the assets we have to ensure we are not maintaining assets that are not required or are underutilised.

• Partnerships: 

• Australian Local Government Association
• Victorian Local Governance Association
• Rural Councils Victoria

• Strategic alignment:

• Council Plan and Municipal Public Health and Wellbeing Plan 2025-29