The Whakatāne District Council’s Annual Report for the 2015/16 financial year has now been adopted and shows that Council had finished the year with a rating surplus of $140,000.

Finance General Manager Helen Barnes said the surplus represented just 0.26 percent of the Council’s operating budget, which indicates both good budgeting and spending discipline.

“A rating surplus or deficit is an indication of whether the right amount of rates income was raised to pay for budgeted expenditure,” she said, “and for the fourth year in a row we have registered a small surplus, which is a very positive outcome. In addition, it is worth noting that 32% of our revenue came from sources other than rates – including subsidies and grants from the New Zealand Transport Agency, Ministry of Health and the like – and thanks to this, for every $10 of rates collected, we were able to deliver about $15 worth of services.”

Ms Barnes noted that the largest component of capital expenditure during the year was for ‘core services’ upgrades – water supply, sewage treatment and disposal, stormwater, roading, and waste – and that total capital expenditure amounted to $16.2 million, which was well below the Long Term Plan budget of $31 million.

Significant projects undertaken included:

• Stormwater upgrades to address flooding issues in the Apanui and Wainui Te Whara catchments
• The completion of the Ōhope-Whakatāne Walk and Cycleway 
• The construction of a greenwaste processing facility
• The commissioning of ultraviolet water treatment at the Whakatāne Aquatic Centre

“Overall, we achieved 83% of our performance targets, and our annual Communitrak survey also showed relatively high levels of community satisfaction for most services and activities,” Ms Barnes said. “Perhaps the most important figure presented in the Report is that on average, across all facilities and services, 78% of District residents were satisfied with Council services. Nine of our services registered over 90% satisfaction rates, including customer service, playgrounds and sewage.”

The key Annual Report outcomes will be published as a special ‘Ko Konei’ Council newsletter in the Eastern Bay Life free-delivery newspaper on 15 October, and the full annual report will be available on the Council website at the same time.