Section 3: Council Activities

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Introduction

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This section provides an overview of the Council’s 14 activities. The information that is contained in the following pages is what is required to be included in a Council’s work programme for the coming year.

The information on each of the key Council activities within this section simply provides an update of the information that was provided in the Community Plan 2009-2019.

The Community Plan sets out the Council’s work plans for each of its activities for the next 10 years. Budget 2011/12 details the work plan for the coming year. Therefore the reader should expect the information within these pages to be in line with the information outlined in the Community Plan 2009-2019.

Budget 2011/12 does not propose to make any major changes to the levels of service that was set out for each of the Council’s activity areas in the Community Plan. However, there have been changes made to the allocation of funding to wastewater budgets to reflect the upgrade of the
New Plymouth Wastewater Treatment Plant and the Waitara pipeline.

The Council made savings through efficiencies in its procurement and has changed its approach to planning for renewals.

Each Council activity section therefore contains the following information.

Responsibility.

 This tells you which Council manager has primary responsibility for the activity.

Description of service.

This briefly describes what the activity encompasses, including sub-activities.

Scale of service.

 This describes the size and scope of the activity, what assets it uses and the average number of activities it performs based on previous service delivery. This is to give a sense of the effort and resources that are applied to the activity, relative to other activities.

Rationale for activity.

This is the reason why New Plymouth District Council delivers, or is involved in, the activity. This includes the community well-beings and why the Council and other organisations is delivering, or is involved in, the activity.

Contribution to Community Outcomes.

 This describes which outcomes the activity contributes to and how, by individual outcome statement.

Negative impacts on community well-being.

 This describes what unintentional negative impacts the activity has, or risks having, on the community in terms of its social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being. This may also outline what the Council will do to reduce or remove these negative effects.

Facing the challenges - assumptions and risks.

 In order to plan over the long-term, the Council must collect and analyse data showing those trends and predictions that will have a significant effect on life in the community, as well as demand for the Council’s activities. Such analysis typically involves population, age profile and location movements and the likely state of the economy and environment. These are then fed into the Council’s long-term decision making processes so that the Council can make informed investment decisions for the services it provides to the community.

Risk comes with any forecast because there are always multiple forces shaping our lives. So to ensure that the Council’s planning is robust, an assessment of risks is also made to identify the degree of uncertainty around any of the Council’s assumptions.

Levels of service/performance measures.

Each table of information contains the following:

• Service objective. This describes the specific objectives of the activity and what it is attempting to achieve.
• Related Community Outcome(s). This shows where a service contributes towards a particular Community Outcome.
• Performance measures. This describes the way the service is measured.
• Performance targets. This describes the target being set for the service.

Financial Plan.

 The tables provide, in a standard accounting format, what the activity is expected to cost for 2011/12 and how we expect it to be paid for. Running (operating) costs and revenues are separated from physical capital investment costs and revenues. For activities that are made up of distinct and significant sub-activities, we break this down to a sub-activity basis.

Appropriations comprise:

• Capital contributions - revenues provided to pay for capital improvements.
• Depreciation unfunded/deferred - we are not asking current ratepayers to cash-fund all the depreciation expense (refer section four ‘financial statements’for further details and explanation).
• Transfer to or from reserves - funds the Council sets aside for specific purposes.

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