Tough decisions, clear plan and a 10% rate rise

Mayor Rosanna Natoli, centre, with councillors and the CEO, faced a difficult budget as the administration works to control depreciation issues.

Sunshine Coast Council has announced a near-10 percent rate rise, saying its 2026-27 Budget makes tough decisions while maintaining essential services, improving roads and investing in major community infrastructure.

Mayor Rosanna Natoli said the budget was focused on financial responsibility, community priorities and making every dollar count after residents, community groups and the region’s first Citizens’ Panel urged council to grow the region with care.

Council adopted the budget at a special meeting on June 1, with most owner-occupier ratepayers facing an increase of  $221.68 a year, up 9.7 percent on 2025-26. The increase is more than twice the current rate of inflation. 

Mayor Natoli said council was operating in one of the most difficult financial environments any tier of government had faced in a generation, with service delivery costs almost 30 percent higher than four years ago and construction costs up more than 60 per cent.

Mayor Rosanna Natoli

She said council had taken a closer look at its operations and found its financial performance needed to lift. “Significant operating deficits were identified over the past five years. Put simply, Council had been spending beyond its means,” Mayor Natoli said.

While the mayor did not specifically mention the depreciation issue in her budget statement, the comments came just weeks after Division 5 Councillor Winston Johnston publicly outlined what he described as council’s most significant long-term financial challenge.

Cr Johnston said council would need to reduce expenditure by $100 million a year for the next decade as it dealt with years of significantly understated depreciation. He said the issue emerged under previous administrations while council’s asset base grew from about $3.5 billion to almost $9 billion, creating growing pressure to fund the future maintenance and replacement of infrastructure. If sustained over 10 years, the expenditure reduction task would amount to about $1 billion.

Cr Johnston said the $100 million annual expenditure reduction would come from a combination of ongoing operational savings and more careful planning of future capital works. He said it was not simply a matter of cutting $100 million from services each year, but of bringing council’s long-term spending commitments into line with the cost of maintaining and replacing infrastructure assets.

Cr Johnston on Monday (June 1) praised Mayor Natoli, chief executive officer John Baker and senior staff for confronting the issue. “This has been without a doubt the hardest and the most difficult budget I’ve had to deal with – not only in the current six years I’ve been a councillor but also in the nine years that I was previously a councillor,” Cr Johnston told the Budget meeting.

Cr Winston Johnston

“I’d like to pay tribute to our CEO, our chief financial officer, all of our executive, as well as the many people under them. In my opinion, for the first time, they have told us how it really is. It was quite shocking. It was shocking for me and I can imagine how difficult it must have been for the Mayor. But to her credit she has taken all the issues on board and worked with everybody to try and sort the problems out – and some of them are fairly substantial.”

Mayor Natoli said Council had taken a closer look at all operations to see how it could improve efficiency and deliver what the community needed.

“Through this process, it also became clear Council’s financial performance needed to lift. Our goal is a balanced budget – so we can keep delivering the services our community needs and sustainably for the long term.

“This Budget contains tough decisions. We need to manage our resources responsibly even in challenging times. Rates will rise and Council will tighten its belt.

“We are committed to delivering for our community now while also preparing for our future – a future that looks so bright.

“We are doing that with a focus on what residents have told us matters most and these are our collective priorities.”

Keeping moving forward  

Mayor Natoli said Council must ensure the lifestyle of our growing community was protected and enhanced as the population grew from 375,000 people to more than 509,000 by 2041.  

“The Sunshine Coast is not simply a growing region. It is a region on the cusp of something genuinely significant. In just over six years, we will co-host the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The eyes of the world will turn toward us, and what they see here will matter. 

“But the legacy of 2032 is not built in 2032. It is shaped by budgets like this one. In the infrastructure we commit to now. In the financial discipline that ensures we arrive at that moment as a Council and a community with the capacity to seize it.’’ 

Concerns remain for Nambour councillor

Cr David Law

Division 10 Councillor David Law  said his concerns from last year’s budget remained. “I still don’t like it,” Cr Law said. He said council still had “a lot” to do before it could move beyond talking about basic services and return to shaping the kind of community residents wanted to live in. “I believe that the Sunshine Coast is so much better than that,” he said. “You can’t do those future-building projects like the Olympics if you’re still struggling with the basics.” Cr Law said Division 10, and particularly Nambour, had missed out on significant projects in the past year, including upgrades to the Eddie De Vere building, which he said could have delivered an activation and re-energising effect similar to the Caloundra Library+ project in Caloundra’s CBD. He said he would continue to keep that project on council’s future budget and focus. 

Cr Law said he was pleased the Nambour Place Plan and Kenilworth streetscape projects were due to begin soon, but said council needed ongoing accountability, responsibility and monitoring to ensure the difficult budget commitments were delivered.

Hinterland region-wide investments   

• $4 million: Petrie Creek Road Shoulder Widening - Paynters Creek Road to Celestine Place, Rosemount  

• $3.6 million: Nambour Place Revitalisation (with Queensland Government support)  

• $3.5 million: Camp Flat Road Upgrade Stage 4, Bli Bli (with Queensland Government support) 

• $3.4 million: Sunshine Coast Mountain Bike Centre project in Maroochy River. 

• $2.9 million: North Arm Road gravel road update 

• $1.8 million: Christensens Road Gravel Road Upgrade, Hunchy  

• $1.6 million: Maple Street Streetscape, Maleny  

• $1.3 million: Maleny Community Precinct District Recreation Park Pathways, North Maleny   

• $725,000: Renewed lighting at the Nambour Showgrounds  

• $450,000: Kenilworth Streetscape upgrade construction 

• $440,000: Roof renewals for Maleny Library ($250,000) and the netball facility in West Woombye ($190,000)