Wollongong City Council unveils a 'nuts and bolts' $337 million draft budget

Along with the draft budget, council also released its Infrastructure Delivery Program which outlines projects over the next four years.

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Both documents are expected to go out on public exhibition after councillors approve them at Monday night's council meeting.

While they might not be Taj Mahal-like, the delivery program includes upgrades to the Beaton Park Tennis Complex, Western Suburbs Pool and building a new Warrawong Community Centre and Library.

Cr Bradbery said there was a focus from councillors to ensure that suburban areas of the local government area got some attention as well, rather than appearing to have a city-centric focus.

"The high priority is out in the burbs and every suburb getting attention paid to their parks, their footpaths and so on," Cr Bradbery said.

"But you've always got to remember people are saying it's city-centric but we have a very dense population there and we have a big demands in terms of pedestrian access and walkways and those sorts of things.

"But we also want to emphasise out in the residential burbs that everyone gets a slice of the pie."

The draft budget has been planned with a 1.8 per cent rate rise, which is above the 1 per cent set by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal.

Council has applied for a rate variation to allow it to raise rates by the 1.8 per cent planned for in the budget - the extra 0.8 per cent is equivalent to $12 on the average residential rate.

Cr Bradbery said, even with that increase, council will still have to spend their money wisely.

"If we get our special rate variation we're going to have an income of around $337 million [and we're] dealing with an asset base of $4 billion dollars," he said.

"What we've got to do is we've got to stretch and work hard to make sure it services and maintains a massive asset base."

Council has also had to deal with the financial effects of COVID, which led to a $16 million impact in the last financial year as well as other issues that may flow into the coming budget.

"We've also had the recent rain events and that's put everything behind in terms of delivering for this year's budget," Cr Bradbery said.

"So there's going to be challenges meeting the backlog as well as spending and meeting the demands in the next financial year."

If approved by the councillors at Monday's meeting, the draft budget and infrastructure delivery program will go on public exhibition.

The final version will be released in June.

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