Coorong District Council has endorsed the IPWEA’s long-term financial planning support tools after successfully preparing an updated financial plan.
Coorong District Council is a rural council south east of Adelaide. It serves a large 900,000-hectare land area but only a small residential population of 5500.
Much of the area is used for dryland farming, but it also has a large coastline. In summer the population swells with tourists who come to enjoy the beaches and lakes at the mouth of the Murray River.
The council developed its plan by closely following the guidance and approach recommended in the IPWEA’s ACELG Practice Note No 6: Long-term Financial Planning.
It also used the IPWEA Long-term Financial Planning Excel model to test alternative scenarios and prepare the financial content for publishing.
Coorong’s Director Corporate & Community Nat Traeger says, “Council members and senior management appreciated the simplicity and strategic focus of the IPWEA tools.
“The IPWEA-recommended approach and Excel Model made it easier to see our financial challenges and ways they can be addressed. The graphs showing key financial indicator results were particularly helpful.
“Council members were able to see how small cumulative increases in rate revenue would make a big difference to our financial position and capacity over time. It was also useful to see that we were able to spend more on asset renewal without adversely affecting long-run financial performance.”
Traeger indicates that the elected body is keen to stick to the new financial strategy.
“The council can see that we will be able overcome our financial challenges and thereby be able to do more of what our community wants,” she says.
The Coorong long-term financial plan can be viewed and downloaded from
www.coorong.sa.gov.au/page.aspx?u=628
ACELG Practice Note No 6 and the Excel Model can be downloaded free of charge from
www.ipwea.org.au/home/PracticeNotes
The IPWEA regularly conducts training courses in all states based on this material. Please visit
www.ipwea.org.au/LTFPWorkshop2012 for more information.