Mayor says ‘moral obligation’ to see pool complete
North Sydney Council is spending more half of its capital works budget to prop up the delayed North Sydney Olympic Pool redevelopment.
Council has put out for public consultation a $79.4 million capital works budget, with $43.5 million to be used to make up the pool’s budget deficit. The next largest spend is $6.5 million for the implementation of the Crows Nest masterplan.
Almost $12 million in capital works will be deferred to enable the pool to be completed by November next year.
Mayor Zoë Baker said the council had a ‘legal and moral obligation’ to see the pool through. Ms Baker said that a recent independent review into the pool found that the previous council had excluded several items from the budget and caused the deficit. Capital works which will not proceed include upgrades and new works at Berry Island, and the reconfiguration of Primrose Park playing fields.
“These are really difficult decisions that councils have to make,” Mayor Baker said. “And in order to make certain that we don’t have to borrow more, we are making the difficult decision.”
Council had voted to ensure service levels were not cut, Ms Baker said, and rates had only increased by the ‘rate peg’ of 3.7 per cent.
“It means that that (some works) are going to take longer to be delivered than (residents) would otherwise have wanted,” Ms Baker said. “And that’s the opportunity cost of decisions that the previous council made in terms of the scale of the pool redevelopment.”
The community had so far been ‘pretty reasonable’ with their feedback on the changes, Ms Baker said. “There’s disappointment. But I think they understand that it’s sensible thing to not leave the financial burden of the additional $25 to $30 million cost of the pool to the next council and the next generation to bear.
“I think that that with careful management into the next year or two, we’ll be able to deliver the works that we’ve deferred and start to build up those infrastructure reserves.”
The mayor said that once the pool opened, one possible way to recoup costs would be to hire the pool out for events like fashion week or movie filming.
Feedback on the draft budget closes 7 June.
See our Real Life story in this edition which examines what has gone wrong with the pool redevelopment.