Financial Sustainability Reviews
The Local Government sector is facing risks to its ongoing financial sustainability. This is partly due to the compounding effect of a rate cap which has been consistently below the cost increases experienced by councils, a limited and reducing unrestricted cash position and the rapidly rising costs of construction which is causing budget increases to many projects.
With this rapidly shifting macroeconomic landscape, the ability of local government to support our community through natural disasters and pandemics, and maintaining our assets whilst remaining financially sustainable is more difficult than ever.
Cost shifting from other levels of government has been an increasingly important financial issue for local government to contend with too. Most recently, advocacy and discussions with State Government has taken place regarding concerns about the responsibility and related costs for social housing initiatives.
It is now more important than ever for Councils to take a Strategic approach to long term financial sustainability – be it cost containment or investigation of new income streams.
In this key session we will hear from 3 different Councils (Yarra City Council, South Gippsland Shire and Knox City Council) to see how they are approaching this complex and ongoing issue.
Our presenters for this session will be:
- Chen Wei, CFO Yarra City Council
- Melissa Baker, Manager Financial Strategy at South Gippsland Shire, and
- Navec Lorkin, CFO Knox City Council
Speakers
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Melissa BakerCFO, Casey City CouncilMelissa Baker has an outstanding record in building financial capability across organisations.
With over 11 years of experience as a senior leader, Melissa uses her extensive financial management experience and collaboration techniques to drive and deliver strategies.
Currently CFO at the City of Casey, Melissa is committed to achieving strong outcomes for the organisation and delivering best value for the community.
These behaviours have underpinned her career in financial management and contribute to her passion for public service.Melissa has been responsible for the financial management in Melbourne Metro, Interface and Regional Councils as well as large public organisations such as Museums Victoria which encompasses Melbourne Museum, Scienceworks, the Royal Exhibition Building, IMAX and the Immigration Museum. She prides herself on being an “accountant with a plus” so she is approachable, down to earth and invests in strong business partnerships.
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Navec LorkinCFO, Knox City CouncilNavec is the chief financial officer at Knox City Council and has over two decades of experience across both the public and private sectors and has worked across all levels of government.
Navec thrives working in challenging and complex organisations where she utilises her experience to improve long-term organisation strategies through working with people to improve planning, governance and stakeholder engagement whilst ensuring financial sustainability.
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Wei ChenCFO, Yarra City CouncilWei Chen is the Chief Financial Officer at Yarra City Council and also an Executive member of FinPro. She prefers to be called Chen, just to confuse HR and IT, but accidently confused a lot more people than intended.
She started her accounting career at Department of Finance in the Australian Government. Although she really enjoyed working on the high profile federal budget, she found the budget discussions in the council chamber much more entertaining.
Chen left Wyndham City Council after spending 12 years of boring suburban life and moved to Richmond to be close to the city action when she thought COVID had ended. She was sadly mistaken and promptly got locked down in a small unit. With nothing else better to do, she guided the councillors at Yarra City Council through the journey of understanding financial sustainability and led council’s most important revenue generating project, the separation of waste charges, through Yarra’s interesting political landscape.Even though she is now much more interested in strategies and stakeholder engagement, she still uses Excel to organise her entertainment calendar.