Lifting the pandemic ban on swimming lessons has delivered a splash of cash to Warrnambool's finances which are more than $800,000 better than forecast.
Cr Max Taylor said it was good the council's position was $811,000 better than forecast because of a strong recovery from the pandemic, mainly due to cash from swimming lessons at AquaZone. The snapshot of the monthly finances to the end of March showed an improvement and would finish the financial year in the black.
Cr Ben Blain said by the end of the financial year the council could end up about $350,000 above its forecast.
He said increased AquaZone visits since COVID-19 restrictions had lifted had been "impressive".
A feasibility study will be carried out later this year on a new or upgraded AquaZone facility, but ratepayers have been warned it would be a five to 10-year wait before there was any real action.
The council will investigate how much a new facility would cost and whether it could be moved to a greenfield site, or upgraded in the current location.
A one-off per capita grant for centre-based child care also helped the bottom line.
The number of job vacancies across the organisation had also had a positive impact on the city's finances.
The council is struggling to fill more than 40 vacant positions across a number of areas from early childhood to the infrastructure department - a shortage that one councillor warned was starting to affect services.
The council last week released its draft budget for 2022-23 which included changes to AquaZone fees.
Some fees will increase slightly and others cut, like a three-month membership will drop 40 per cent.
The council will host a community cafe at Lighthouse Theatre on May 11 between 5.30pm and 7.30pm to give the public a chance to have a say on the new budget and council plan.
The budget also showed the parks and gardens budget would continue to rise, jumping from $4.1 million to almost $4.8 million.
And that bill was only set to keep increasing as more new housing developments were completed, the council's chief executive officer Peter Schneider said.
"Every year we get more parks and gardens to look after with new developments and things come online," he said. "We've doubled the number of houses in the last year. "Our historic average over 10 years is about 200 houses a year and last year we did 400. Every time a development comes on board there's new public open space that we need to maintain. It gets handed over to us."
Property price increases have seen the value of land jump in Warrnambool 39 per cent from $7.53 billion to $10.47 billion, the budget says.
====
Katrina Lovell
Katrina Lovell is a senior journalist at The Standard who covers council news and human interest stories.
Katrina Lovell is a senior journalist at The Standard who covers council news and human interest stories.
