Gunnedah Shire Council third-quarterly budget shows shire in good position post COVID-19

The third-quarterly budget summary has been released and the council is flush with money for projects left, right and centre.

For example, the council's general manager Eric Groth said it had secured an extra $1.065 million for work on state roads alone, "largely due to grant funds put out by the state and federal government".

"The pandemic hasn't damaged council's finances to the extent it has to other places," he said.

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Gunnedah mayor Jamie Chaffey said it was "exciting" how many projects were in the pipeline and would "continue to be delivered at the end of this term of council and well into the next one".

"This current year we're seeing record investment in projects and infrastructure in the shire to the number we've never seen before," he said.

"We're in a very healthy position, we're in a growth pattern, and council's focused on continuing to grow our community and economy."

He said the quarterly budget's result was really solid and one the whole council was proud of.

"Not only have we survived drought and COVID-19 in a way that many other regional communities have struggled, we have supported our community to the best of our ability, have continued to deliver these projects, stayed financially very sound and responsible, and have had a very close eye continually monitoring the critical things in our community like our rate of unemployment," Cr Chaffey said.

He said the shire was at its worst when it hit a 6.1 per cent unemployment rate, but this was nothing compared to more than 10 per cent, which was the forecast rate.

"I'm proud we got nowhere near that and we're already starting to see a fall in the unemployment rate which is a very proud thing for the shire," he told the Leader.

"It's enabled us to support our business community, keep business employed, keep infrastructure either created or updated, and still stay in a very strong financial position and we take that fiscal responsibility very seriously as a group of elected members and as a complete organisation."

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