The Australian Government's decision to provide local governments with a 50 per cent pre-payment of their 2025/26 Financial Assistance (FA) Grant will have implications for Toowoomba Regional Council's (TRC) forecast budget adopted just last week.
TRC was this week paid $2.8 million of its 2025/26 FA Grant from the Australian Government which was only expected to be received after June 30.
Toowoomba Region Mayor Geoff McDonald said receiving the early payment with very little notice was a difficult outcome for all local governments.
"While its very good news we will now likely flip our 2024/25 $1.4 million deficit into a $1.4 million surplus, it's an absolute circus that money we thought we would receive next financial year has now been received this year and therefore needs to be accounted for in this year's actuals.
"This gets to the heart of the challenges local governments are facing in trying to balance financial sustainability with delivering essential services to the community while not knowing when or how much funding we'll receive from other levels of government.
"We budgeted to receive the full $5.5 million FA Grant payment in the 2025/26 year when we adopted our forecast budget last week.
"We will now need to find an additional $2.8 million in revenue from somewhere next year, or look for additional savings, to maintain our forecast $1.5 million surplus," Mayor McDonald said.
"It's an issue we've been trying to highlight for some time and in October we will propose a motion at the Local Government Association of Queensland conference calling on the State and Federal Governments to provide local governments with a five-year rolling schedule of FA Grant payments in an effort to stop this very thing occurring.
"We also continue to be hampered by the low quantum of our FA Grant which was once as high as $19 million, now just $5.5 million.
"We will continue to advocate for change so that local government ratepayers are not left to carry the can once again," he said.
