Positive year-end result funds remediation projects

The Waikato Regional Council’s budget surplus for the 2010/11 financial year is likely to fund essential building repairs and the Tui Mine remediation project.

A report to the finance and audit committee yesterday detailed the regional council’s positive financial and service performance for the year ending 30 June 2011.

The report to the committee showed the council substantially achieved its performance targets and delivered a $2.105 million operating surplus, which after budget adjustments, requests for budget carry overs, provisions for Tui Mine and building remediation, left a surplus of $854,000 for the 2010/11 year.

Earlier in the year, the council had agreed to allocate $400,000 of the forecast surplus to the Tui Mine remediation works and $270,000 to pay for legal and consent costs required to repair the cladding on the council’s Grey St building in Hamilton.

Finance group manager Mike Garrett said that taking into account the previous year’s surplus of $1.881, the council had funding of $2.735 million available.

“While cost estimates have been received for the remediation of the leaky building problem, funding has not yet been identified,” he said.

“In addition, funding for year two of the Tui Mine project has also not yet been identified.

“The cumulative surplus would allow both these items to be funded without any additional impact on rates.”

Staff will recommend where to spend the unallocated funds after final year-end adjustments and confirmation of results by external audit.

Cost savings across a range of areas including salary savings due to staff vacancies contributed to the favourable variance.

The council achieved or exceeded 74.6 per cent of its goals, with 12.3 per cent being achieved in part.