General Business - June 18 2025 Special Meeting

Published on 19 June 2025

Councillor Dan Ballard

We all know this is going to be a challenging year for our community. There’s been a lot of time spent trying to craft a budget to minimise the Council’s impact on already strained household budgets.

Councillors and Council staff are committed to improving service delivery standards and increasing our fiscal discipline as we actively work to execute the business of Council.

That 41% of our capital budget will be funded through State and Federal grants is a pleasing result. This is an area of continued focus, and we’ll aim to do better into the future and reduce the burden that is felt by our ratepayer base.

For me, looking through a financial lens of the capital works budget in the upcoming year, the money that we will spend around water mains network reconfiguration is a particularly important piece of work.

It’s not only going to help us reduce our maintenance costs, but we’ll also reduce the excessive wear and tear on our ageing water infrastructure, and hopefully we’ll see a reduction in the number of water leaks that are ever present.

A reminder that the infrastructure that we’re working with is ageing and deteriorating.

As we work on not only attracting but retaining high-quality staff, I’d like to welcome the two new Directors – Kelvin Thytherleigh in Corporate Services, and Andrew Hobbs in Infrastructure Services.

I’m certainly sure that their addition to our team will be seeing those service delivery standards improve and also our financial performance improve.

I’d like to say that the budget probably isn’t all the way there, but I think it certainly represents a giant step in the right direction as we as a Council mature and have more opportunity to bed in those practices and impose our priorities on this Council.

I’d like to thank everyone for the work that they’ve put in. Again, we’re not quite there, but I think it’s a big step forward from where we were last year, and I think by the time we hand down our fourth budget we’ll be getting pretty close to where we want to be.

Councillor Travis Crowther

I’m pleased to see that we’ve looking towards investing heavily into some events to increase tourism to Mount Isa. I think it’s a vital part of our economic development and extending our reach to all the different communities out there.

The more we can bring people to Mount Isa, the more money it’s going to bring through to all our businesses, which will have a flow-on to all the sporting events and stuff like that.

We’re investing heavily into economic development again. With the downturn of the mines, we’ve really got to work in on that. I’m pleased that we’ve really focused in on economic development, as well as tourism, in this budget and working forward.

I congratulate the team on an effort that they’ve done with presenting this budget. It’s been a lot of meetings and back and forth, so we’ve come to an agreement and I think we’re happy.

We’ve had a slight increase in that budget, but we’re going to be able to produce a lot of events going forward for the coming year.

Councillor John Tully

My portfolio includes Works and Engineering, and Water and Sewerage. The Transport Infrastructure Development Scheme (TIDS) is $950,000 that we’ve spent, and we’ll hopefully get $475,000 from State funding, matched with the $475,000 from Council.

Council continues to work with the State Government into sharing funding costs for rural roads for TIDS.

There seems to be quite an issue with the sewerage odour around Mount Isa, so we’re spending $500,000 on that to try to eradicate that problem, especially down in “Stinky Creek”.

The major water network reconfiguration is $5 million to remove the pumping directly into the water works.

What happens with the water that goes into the mains, at the moment, it starts and stops, which creates wear-and-tear quicker, with the water starting and stopping, so we’re hoping to spend $5 million in making sure the water is a standard flow, to eliminate these leaks.

There’s leaks all over town and hopefully we’re getting to the bottom of them. With the new Directors, hopefully it’ll be sorted out in the near future.

Duchess Road, we’re hoping to have water right through to the Spreadborough estate – $740,000 is getting spent this year.

Hopefully we’ll have water right down to the end of Spreadborough within the coming couple of years.

The Roads to Recovery (funding for) Lanskey Road, off Moondarra Road going to the Lake, we’ve got $200,000 directed towards reconstruction of that road along those rural properties.

The design phase of the Reservoir #3 Replacement is $50,000.

Councillor James Coghlan

During our time in Council here we’ve improved, and I think we’ll keep pushing to improve, and we’ll question the Budget.

I think things are tightening up and we’re becoming more efficient. And the members of this Council ask hard questions and disagree respectfully; it’s allowing us to move forward, after a bit of stagnation in previous years.

For me, we need to do more for the community, but getting that balance right between what’s needed and what we can provide is a delicate balancing act.

For me, we’re not just talking about our time in Council, we’re trying to set our town up for the future – as in, for the next 20 years, not just now.

Everybody sitting around this Chamber have children here, who are going to grow up in this town. We want to see it continue to grow. This Council and this Budget is the first step in trying to put in a bedrock foundation so that our town can improve and be great again.

It’s going to take more than this term, but we need to put the foundations in so that we’re still the great town that we are now, in 20 years’ time.

I think the appointment of Andrew Hobbs and Kelvin Tytherleigh is a great step in that direction. I think they’ve both shown in their short time that they’re going to be a great asset to us.

Deputy Mayor Kim Coghlan

I’d just like to say thank you to the staff that readied the Budget. We have had a hard 18 months, and this has been a better budget than the first one, because we had a lot more time, which is really good.

The only way we can go is to just keep going forward.

I was a bit disappointed in the Budget that there wasn’t enough to put more people in Parks and Gardens. I think we need more feet on the ground there – they look after parks, median strips, the CBD and the Cemetery. They get events ready, they do the pack-up and the set down, and there’s only a small group of them. I think they do a good job with the amount of people they have.

The Operational Plan, while it’s a good Operational Plan, I think as Councillors and to the executive staff, we have to make sure … it’s not just sitting on a shelf and not doing anything. It has to be a working document.

I look forward to working with the two new Directors that are here.