The how and why of council budgets | The Examiner | July 1, 2025 - video Dailymotion

The City of Launceston council has endorsed its budget for the 2025-26 financial year - here's how they actually create it. Video by Joe Colbrook

Transcript

00:00It's council budget season, and it's very easy to get caught up in how much your rates

00:04are going up by, how much it's going to cost to get your bins collected, but you might

00:08not stop and think, what actually goes into preparing the council budget? Where do these

00:12numbers come from? Well, today I'm here to tell you how. Unlike a household budget where

00:18you might start with your expected income and work out how much you can spend, the council's

00:22budget is done a bit back to front. Nine months ahead of time, each of the council's departments

00:27are asked to submit their budget requests for the next financial year, and these can

00:31include things like running the aquatic centre, keeping cultural institutions like QVMAG open,

00:37and of course maintaining the city's many parks. Once all these expected costs are added up,

00:43as well as some more easily predictable forms of income, things like interest payments on

00:47the council's cash savings and dividends paid on its investments, it then becomes time to

00:53work out how much needs to be gathered in rates and what those rates should be. Ignoring the millions

00:59of dollars that is expected to be spent on capital works projects, which is another budget entirely,

01:05the city of Launceston council expects to return a deficit of $786,000 for the 2025 to 26 financial year.

01:14It's got nothing in debt and quite a bit of cash, so it means that unless it carries on running these

01:20deficits for several years or, say, decides to build a billion-dollar stadium down at Home Point,

01:26should councillors want to, they can return the organisation to surplus within a few years.