By Eleanor Wilson
Extreme weather events, material supply chain issues and high demand for construction have culminated in pain to the hip pocket for the City of Casey, with some project costs in its Capital Works Budget escalating by over 20 per cent.
Casey administrators revealed the findings of its Mid-Year Budget Review at a council meeting on Tuesday 21 March, noting variations to a record 152 projects in the $227 million 2022-23 Capital Works Budget.
Many projects in the budget are “behind projected expenditure”, the council said, with capital works expenditure to 31 December 2022 $43 million below budget.
Council officers predict their could be as much as an $80 million budget carryover into the next financial year – representing almost a third of the entire 2022-23 budget.
City of Casey administrator Cameron Boardman said the issues causing project delays are being felt across the country.
“We’ve talked about things that are not necessarily unique to Casey, but are national, if not global, issues at the moment, around high demand for construction, supply chain challenges, complications caused by weather, particularly flooding and remediation required in other parts of the state to deal with that which have caused a resources distortion, land acquisition and agency approval delays, which is something that it outside of our control and also high unit prices,” he said.
“They are undoubtedly exacerbated because of the size and scale of our capitals works budget and the type of growth municipality we are managing at the moment.”
Mr Boardman said the board of administrators is being as transparent and honest with ratepayers as possible regarding the issue.
“We have been as transparent as we possibly can be, both favourably and unfavourably, and we will continue to do that as part of our good governance and service delivery obligation to our community,” he said.
Fellow administrator Miguel Belmar reassured residents that work is being done to ensure the carryover costs will be manageable in next year’s budget.
“The work has been done to ensure that the delivery of the capital works budget will be achieved to the best standard,” he said.
