False and incomplete Long Term Financial Plan
One of the obligations of the councillors when determining the viability of a major project, is its full Life Cycle impact. This is done through the Long Term Finance Plan (LTFP). The final LTFP used to approve the Sports and Rec centre (Aug 2022) had significant errors and removal of previously reported information, giving rise to question if the council provided a false and incomplete LTFP, which artificially showed a better council performance, in order to gain approval of the proposal.
The council made several changes to the Long Term Financial Plan in 2021 and 2022, when the Sports and Recreation centre proposal was being considered. The two tables above show the Performance indicators taken from the LTFP for 2022 and 2020 respectively.
As described below, it is reasonable to question if the council intentionally provided false and incomplete information to conceal the real financial position, in order to gain approval for the proposal.
- The Debt service ratio, a vital indicator of financial viability of the council (indicated with a red 1 in the top panel), is below 0.5 for the full 10 year forecast. This means the council can only service less than 50% of its debts for the next 10 years. The target is >2, which is 4 times higher than the forecast, and yet it is shown in green, as though the target will be met.
The GM has subsequently claimed that it is a higher value; but did not release a new version of the full plan.
- 6 performance indicators were removed from the plan (shown with a red X on lower panel). It is reasonable to assume that these performance targets will not be met, therefore the council intentionally removed these from the plan. It is possible that the council would have only met 5 of the 13 performance measures.
For example, the infrastructure backlog (measures the ratio of value of underperforming assets to the full value of assets) which has a target of less than 2%, has deteriorated from 0.73% to 1.95%, just below target, from 2019 to 2021, and is removed from the LTFP for 2022. It is reasonable to question if this was intentionally removed to conceal this target being missed in the future.
- The 2020 plan shows actuals from previous years (e.g. 2017 – 2019), so that the trend from previous years could be easily seen. No previous year values are shown. It is reasonable to question if this was intentionally removed to prevent easy assessment of the trend.
- The target misses are no longer highlighted in red, but shown in a non-standard brown.
It is reasonable to conclude that there is prima facie evidence that there has been corrupt conduct as defined in ICAC Act 1988 No 35, sect 8, 1(a), (b) and (c).
We ask that the Long Term Financial Plan for 2022 is included in the scope of the Public Enquiry.