Jobs expected to be offered at Central Coast Council in the next financial year include marketing officers, open space and leisure planners and engineering students.

Marketers would quantify customer insights, create new surveys, and gauge ongoing customer sentiment.

Engineering undergraduates would support asset surveys and respond to internal and external customer inquiries and “build the talent pool” for highly technical roles.

But from an employer brand perspective, the Council admits it faces reputational issues.

“Job security and general culture/morale also impact the number of candidates seeking employment with the Council,” the Council said.

And with 56 per cent of the workforce over the age of 45, the Council relies heavily on mature workers.

“This reliance is not yet supported by the recruitment and retention of younger staff where people between the ages of 16 and 25 represent only 1.8% of permanent employees, opening up a tremendous opportunity for the employment programs of the young people”, says the Council.

The information came from the recently presented resourcing strategy.

The new staff would be part of the current workforce.

By the end of last year’s restructuring to cut costs, the workforce had been reduced by around 300 to 2,183 and is now below that.

“Central Coast Council is a complex organization employing 2,172 people (staff) across a range of services,” the strategy states.

The council admitted that it has no plans to increase or improve these services over the next 10 years, as such a scenario would require a far greater rate increase than the community would be willing to pay.

In its latest long-term financial plan, the Council said that, given the community’s anger and frustration with the Council’s financial situation, a decision was made to focus solely on maintaining viability. Council’s financial position and on securing emergency loan repayments, rather than providing for an increase in the Council’s budget. services, which would cost more.

The Board has now asked the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) to maintain the current one-time rate change of 13% plus the annual rate anchor for another seven years after 2024.

He said this would allow the Council to: demonstrate to commercial lenders that the Council was able to meet outstanding loan commitments; Maintain services at least at current levels; embed further productivity improvements throughout the organization and establish an ongoing program of business improvement and service review.

“The Sustain SV scenario shows a path that allows the Council to maintain the current level of services for the community via sustaining the SV for an additional seven years and to constrain its expenditures through productivity/efficiency savings with limited adjustments to levels of service,” the Council said. .

Assumed a reduction in amortization with emphasis on asset renewal and construction of limited new assets and that annual operating surpluses match projected principal repayment requirements for the Council’s borrowing expense .

This would mean that in 2031-32, when the variation in rates would end, an organizational restructuring would be undertaken to rebalance the organization to the reduced revenues.

This would result in a reduction of $6 million in personnel costs and $4 million in materials and services, resulting in an estimated operating surplus of $1.5 million that would be required for principal repayment. remaining debt.

The resourcing strategy showed that as of June 30, 2020, the cost to bring Board assets to a satisfactory level was over $205 million or an arrears ratio of 3.43%.

This backlog was above the 2% benchmark set by the Local Government Office and one of the problems the community said would be solved by merging their two former councils.

The plan indicated that the population of the Central Coast was approximately 343,968 with projections for 415,000 people by 2036.

“To meet projected population growth, an estimated 41,500 additional homes and 24,600 new jobs will be needed to support the population increase,” the council said.

Merilyn Vale