Whanganui District Council ends year with $1.58m deficit but CEO says it is delivering ‘more with less’

Kerbside recycling is among the initiatives that show Whanganui District Council is delivering more with less, its chief executive says. Photo / Mike Tweed

Whanganui District Council has ended the financial year with a $1.58 million deficit.

Chief executive David Langford said delivering a deficit was “not the desired result” but was a relatively good outcome given insurance costs increased by $1.65m above budget.

In a report to councillors, he said the financial result was also affected by a significant amount of unbudgeted additional work, including attempts to address homelessness in the city ($142,000), emergency funding to Whanganui Regional Museum ($195,000) and reviewing council-controlled organisations ($63,000).

Other unbudgeted work included a review of the museum ($36,000), a tram feasibility study ($25,000), rates remissions granted above the approved budget ($20,000) and lost airport revenue because of ministerial delays in signing off a landing fees proposal ($20,000).

The cost of the unbudgeted work was absorbed by savings made elsewhere, Langford said.

Roading emergency works also required significant extra spending but was partly offset by a financial subsidy from the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi.

The wages and salaries budget included a $1.4m (6%) savings target which came in $312,000 over budget.

“This is a very good result against a challenging savings target,” Langford said.

Of the over-budget amount, $200,000 went on unbudgeted redundancy costs and the balance was spent on unbudgeted additional roles, including the Three Waters transition manager.

Almost all of the capital works programme was delivered, with $68m of the $75.7m budget spent. The biggest single variance was the port project – underspent by $5.8m and being delivered by the port company, not the council.

The undelivered capital works had been delayed and deferred mainly because there were not enough project managers, Langford said.

“Of the work we have delivered, almost all has come in on or under budget. The entire programme is only about half a per cent away from budget.

“There is a lot of rhetoric about how councils can’t deliver to budget – but we had 98 budget lines in the past year, and we’ve delivered most of it on time, on budget.”

Langford said in the 10 years of the new long-term plan, 80% of spending was earmarked for core infrastructure. About 6 or 7% was tagged for libraries, galleries and museums.

Since the long-term plan was adopted, a number of staff have been made redundant as a result of service level cuts and the council’s ongoing savings programme. Some staff had left the council and some were moved into vacant positions, Langford said.

“The vacancy management programme remains in effect and there are currently 30.57 FTE [fulltime-equivalent] vacancies on hold. Currently, the council employs 284.83 FTE.”

Adjusted for the services recently brought in-house, including Whanganui & Partners and the Splash Centre, this was about eight FTE lower than when Langford started working at the council in March 2022.

“It is worth noting that during this period the council has launched a new kerbside waste service, rebuilt the planning team to reduce its reliance on expensive contractors and added safety and Unicom staff to the airport,” Langford said.

“This provides some demonstrable evidence that the council is becoming more efficient and is delivering more with less.”

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.