HORSHAM Rural City Council’s quarterly expenditure is on track with year-to-date projections.
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A finance and performance report, presented to councillors earlier this month, offered an overview of the quarterly spending while making comparisons with the 2017-18 budget.
Council corporate services directer Graeme Harrison said $11.2 million was spent of the $52.4 million budget. He said council expected to spend $11.6 million.
Mr Harrison said capital works expenditure had an excellent start.
He said the Kalkee Road Children’s and Community Hub, valued at $4.8 million, and the new landfill cell and plant purchases, worth $610,000 for the first quarter, accounted to a positive trend.
“In the past, we have not met our expectations on capital spend. It is good to see we are spending on track, which means council projects are on track,” he said.
Mr Harrison said year-to-date estimates were slightly higher for road construction projects. He attributed the result to works occurring during the off-season.
However, he said there was little variance between actual spending and the projected spending.
“Construction work has a season so there was not a lot planned for the first quarter,” he said.
“We weren’t expecting to spend money in the first quarter so that is why there is no year-to-date projection.”
Mr Harrison said the spend was across 15 road segments covering the infrastructure gap program, roads to recovery program and council’s road construction program.
“Quarter one budget was $240,000, but due to favourable weather the program was able to start early and $760,000 was spent in the first quarter,” he said.
Mr Harrison noted an unfavourable variance in the council’s initiatives expenditure.
“We are still waiting on the central business district revitalisation grant, [worth $1.065 million],” he said.
He said work could begin, and the discrepancy would be resolved, once the grant had been received.
The council’s total income has a favourable variance because the Kalkee Road Children’s and Community Hub grant, worth $1 million, was received earlier than expected.
Mr Harrison said council departments were in line with service delivery projections.
He said the council was also reporting back on its rates collection with $22.7 million received in rates to date.
“This just shows we are achieving 98.3 per cent collection of our rates,” he said.
However, he said the first quarter was not an accurate representation of how the council was tracking.
“It’s just the first quarter so it’s not a good gauge of where things are tracking because it has only been three months,” he said.