General Manager’s report

As General Manager, I am responsible for implementing the Council’s decisions which are aimed at achieving outstanding results for the community and the Local Government Area. My focus is to continuously improve our services, facilities and infrastructure and, particularly during 2019/20, to support our community during unprecedented challenges.

Social responsiveness

The COVID-19 pandemic compelled us to be more agile in our approach to service delivery. In response to the closure of our frontline services under the NSW Public Health Orders a program to redeploy staff from frontline services ensured we kept our staff not just employed, but working and providing invaluable support to the wider community in an incredibly challenging time. Operational staff shifts were changed to respond to the higher demand placed on our open spaces, parks and public amenities. Redeployed staff undertook ‘care calls’ to elderly people in the local area to support the most vulnerable in our community and also facilitated iPad loans for seniors, to help them stay in touch with loved ones and access key online support.

In recognition of the importance of public spaces for our community during lockdown and restricted travel we persevered with the completion of the Oatley Park inclusive adventure playground and opened three other inclusive playgrounds in Penshurst Park, Simpson Reserve and Paddy Tyler Reserve. We installed the world first award-winning ChillOUT hubs and completed Kempt Field adventure playground and amenities, Meade Park adventure playground and amenities, and Charles Pirie Reserve inclusive sports amenities building.

Building financial sustainability

Our consultation with the community in 2019 confirmed support for a single, fair, equitable and consistent rating system for Georges River Council ratepayers.

More than 7,000 ratepayers told us they wanted the minimum rate to be the same across the entire local government area and we are working towards this goal.

Council staff have achieved $9 million in savings but the challenge remains in balancing community expectations with future financial sustainability. There is a growing gap between the cost of providing services and facilities for our growing and diverse community and the funding available to meet those costs.

Whilst the harmonisation of rates is a mandatory requirement of the NSW Government in 2020/21, the generation of additional income from rates is necessary to continue to provide the services and facilities our community values.

Achieving excellence

The continued hard work of our staff, despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, was recognised throughout this financial year: •

The 2018/19 Annual Report won a Bronze Award in the Australasian Reporting Awards.

The development of the ChillOUT Hubs received

Highly Commended in the national Smart Cities and

Communities Awards.

Council was a finalist in the Renewable Energy category of the 2019 Cities Power Partnership

Awards for the hydropanel array at Hurstville

Aquatic Leisure Centre.

In the 2020 Local Government Excellence Awards

Council was a finalist for: -

The Norm O’Neill Cricket Training Facility

Charles Pirie Inclusive Sporting Amenities Building

Smart Collaboration – ChillOUT Hubs

Oatley Park Nature-based All Inclusive Adventure

Playground

‘The Green’ Pop-up Park

Carss Bush Park Foreshore Naturalisation

TRUE Women Female Leadership Program 2019

River Run All-Staff Conference.

Our annual staff survey has continued to gather strong participation from all staff and has provided valuable insights into the perceptions and sentiments of staff regarding key drivers of employee engagement and organisational performance. Over the last year we continued to see positive increases in results in 29 out of 32 categories including high levels of staff passion and engagement. Georges River Council is outperforming other councils on 31 of the 33 Council benchmark categories such as leadership, staff passion and engagement, progress and work satisfaction.

We achieved further reductions in our development application processing times, including in the number of development applications exceeding 100 days.

We were one of seven councils to receive endorsement from the Greater Sydney Commission for the Georges River Local Planning Statement (LSPS) 2040. The LSPS guides land use planning and the delivery of significant infrastructure over the next 20 years. We lodged the Georges River Local Environmental Plan (LEP) 2020 with the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment. The LEP 2020 was the first stage of a four-stage approach to preparing the comprehensive Georges River LEP.

During the year our staff completed in excess of 61,000 service requests and responses to correspondence, and importantly, improved on all of our annual customer service results and satisfaction levels.

Future focussed service delivery

Our City Strategy and Innovation Directorate (CSI) continues to work towards positioning the LGA and Council as a strong and influential entity in Greater Sydney and NSW with a focus on innovation. The team’s ability to influence legislation and decisionmakers has generated opportunities for the city.

Projects implemented by CSI this year include the adoption of: • Georges River 2050 – Leading for Change which sets a path for a better future, amplifies strengths, unlocks opportunities for Georges River and represents Council’s commitment to a future focused, ambitious city and a positive leader for change.

Kogarah Health Education and Innovation Precinct – Investment Attraction, Vision and Strategy drives the economic expansion of the current Kogarah

Health and Education Precinct by identifying the opportunities available to Council to attract business and investment, incentivise innovation and build long lasting strategic partnerships to support existing and future jobs.

Hurstville Place Strategy – Heart of the City provides a vision, priority projects and key actions to achieve our goal of Hurstville becoming the heart of the city.

The strategy presents priority projects to transform

Hurstville CBD through innovative, economic, cultural and infrastructure improvement projects. Georges River Reputation Strategy strives to influence the knowledge and opinions of people who live both inside and outside the LGA. Georges River Advocacy Program. We released our Libraries 2030 Strategy to support the shift away from the traditional notion of a library as simply a place to borrow books. Our libraries house an extensive collection of online resources and play an important role as a central hub in our community for people to socialise, learn, create and engage.

I would like to thank Mayor Kevin Greene for his leadership during the challenges of the 2019/20 financial year. I would also like to thank our Councillors for their commitment to our community and their support during the year.

Finally, I would like to thank the Executive Team for their commitment to business continuity and the accelerated adaptation of our service provision to keep the community and staff safe during this challenging year. The commitment of all Georges River Council staff towards prioritising our community and managing our response to the COVID-19 pandemic, while still staying focussed on our long-term vision has been commendable.

Gail Connolly

General Manager Georges River Council

Lunar New Year 2020