We are currently developing our 2025-26 budget. The budget is being informed by:

• Feedback from 1,059 people on what our priorities should be for the next four years
• Input from a demographically representative community panel

The community panel convened in May 2024 to consider the priorities identified by residents and develop themes and strategies for our Council and Health and Wellbeing Plan 2025-29. The annual budget will deliver the actions in the plan.

This approach is in line with our Community Engagement Policy as required by the Local Government Act.

Budget workshop

The community panel was reconvened in November 2024 to provide input to Council’s 2025-26 budget.

The panel was asked to:

• review the budget allocation across our 24 community services using what the community said should be priorities for Council
• make recommendations to increase spending in the services that are highest priority
• identify opportunities to reduce spending to balance recommendations for increased spending
• provide input to specific ideas that Council could consider as part of its budget

Public submissions

Given the depth of community engagement activities outlined above there will be no separate public submission process this year.

The next opportunity to make a submission to the budget will be in July 2025. This will inform the 2026-27 budget.

We are bringing this opportunity forward so that public submissions can be considered early in the budget process and have more opportunity to influence the outcome.

This is consistent with what we heard from participants of previous community engagement processes when we recently reviewed Council’s Community Engagement Policy.

For this project we will be engaging our community at the level of Collaborate on the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2) Spectrum.
This means we will look to the community for advice and innovation in formulating solutions and incorporate your advice and recommendations into the decisions as much as possible.