Council's director of corporate services, Steve Embry told the September 9 council meeting there has been significant improvement in the time (preparing) and the standard of the draft 2019-20 statements, compared to the previous year.

"We are in pretty good shape as a council," Cr Len Roberts concluded. "In comparison to last year, we are in front. Council staff have worked tirelessly to get this done."

At the September 9 meeting, council resolved to sign the draft general purpose and special purpose financial statements so they could be forwarded to the independent auditor.

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Deputy mayor, Cr Claire Ponton said council was not signing off on these statements being 100 per cent correct. "There are some minor issues that need to be addressed. We are not adopting the statements at this stage, but proceeding to get them to the auditor on time."

Cr Troy Fowler asked for details of the consultancy costs, saying it had been reported (in a media report) that they had risen 262 per cent. The director of corporate services told the meeting the consultancy costs in 2020 were $2.183m, compared with 2019 - $2.668.

"I'm a new councillor and it's confusing but I am slowly getting there," Cr Fowler said. "One of our local (media) reported that our staff costs would be $92 million... I don't see $92, I see a lot less. I find it very interesting that local (media) would give false information that causes havoc in our community."

Cr Peter Epov was the only councillor to vote against moving forward on the financial statements. He said he had picked up three errors in the time he had had to read the documents. "Near enough is not good enough for me."

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