The one document that decides what gets dug up, repaved and built across the Coast this year, place by place: $40.2 million at the Charmhaven sewage plant, $8.65 million for the Woy Woy intersection, an oval bought in Kincumber, and $38 million of added local priorities.
Decisions
The panel voted 4 to 0 on 22 October. The building fails seven co-living standards, starting with where it is, and still has no occupation certificate.
The state bought them to keep the coast public. Officers now say it expects community land, which a council cannot sell, and a rescission motion was on the 27 October agenda.
The Commonwealth pays for the stadium works. To keep the year’s capital program at its adopted total, the officers’ report cuts Toukley’s project budget by $400,000.
ABS approvals ran at about two-thirds of the yearly pace the state target implies. Two-thirds of last year’s were in the northern half of the Coast.
A committee voted 7 to 0 to recommend a public exhibition of at least 28 days; full Council decides first, so it is not open for comment yet. Twenty actions, $4.98 million over 10 years, and a study of Avoca Lagoon’s old dredge hole.
IPART's 2027-28 peg for the council is exactly the state median. A new 0.46 point cybersecurity adjustment is the biggest single addition; higher base costs, a doubled population factor and the end of an election cost deduction make up most of the rest.
An amendment without the Mardi Dam clauses was lost 7 to 8. Treated water was below 0.001 micrograms per litre in all 16 samples this quarter; five upstream creek sites were above a guideline value on 5 August.
Council adopted the review on 25 August. Frequent floods now model lower and rarer ones generally higher; lake flood levels could rise 0.50 m by 2070. In August no funding had been allocated for the next stage.
The 6 October minutes are out. An amendment to wait for the Porters Creek biodiversity agreement tied 3 to 3; the motion carried with two changes to the officers’ words, and no direction recorded on an outside operator.
The committee asked what the full Leagues Club Park design would cost to maintain. Its 13 October agenda answers: $345,144.61 a year, plus $157,036.85 of depreciation, against about $59,507 spent on the park now.
A report to the 6 October Environment and Planning Committee puts the section 7.11 and 7.12 balances at $230.49 million. In 2025-26, $6.21 million was spent from them and $9.39 million earned in interest. A draft plan aims to lift annual spending.
A report to the 6 October Economic Development Committee recommends a staged model: keep majority ownership, consider selling part of one parcel, lease the rest as demand appears, and decide whether to seek an outside operator. Cheaper land rents have marked the 2025 plan down.
The panel’s reasons for refusing all three Wamberal seawall applications start with owners’ consent the applicants never completed, the State’s own lots among the gaps. The route still open, council’s section 68 application, can authorise works without any owner’s consent.
Ten unanimous findings and no agreed recommendations. The Greens, Labor and Coalition senators wrote three separate prescriptions, and two of them point opposite ways on the same Budget tax change.
A notice of motion asks NSW agencies to test fish and yabbies in Ourimbah Creek for PFAS and to sample Mardi Dam sediment, and asks whether landholders who pump from the creek should stop during floods. Officers say detections fall away downstream and are below detection at the extraction point.
Cr John McNamara is Mayor for two years, Cr Rachel Stanton Deputy for one. It was a mid-term election the Act required of every NSW council that elects its own mayor. The mayoral fee is $118,530, and the Deputy’s $10,000 is deducted from it.
The federal housing advisers now expect the Accord target in the December quarter of 2030, a quarter later than they said in April. Approvals are up 26 per cent and commencements are up 15 and slowing.
81,492 residents aged 65 and over, ahead of Canterbury-Bankstown and Blacktown, from new ABS data to 30 June 2025. Ninety-six councils have fewer people in total than the Coast has over-65s.
Council says it is a precautionary response to repeated anti-social behaviour in and around the library precinct, after several years of trying to manage the risk while keeping the doors open. It started on 21 August.
83 complaints to the Office of Local Government in 2024-25, up from 48, and the first rise since the 256 recorded in the year the councillors were suspended. The whole state rose too, and the Central Coast’s complaints are about something different.
$206.1 million spent against a $237.0 million phased budget, which the report itself calls 87 per cent against a 90 per cent target. It expects June to close the gap, and it names the May councillor workshop that created the contingency.
IPART sets the peg, not the council, and it caps the council’s total income rather than your notice. Categories, land valuations and a ten year catch-up are the three ways your bill can outrun it without anybody breaking a rule.
The adopted plan names the line item and lists the twelve projects whose money now sits in it. We checked the arithmetic against the plan’s own funding split.
41 substantive items, five deferred notices of motion, and two attempts to undo decisions taken four weeks before. The meeting was set for 6.30pm on Tuesday 25 August.
The Coast is one of four council areas outside Greater Sydney with a local planning panel, so a reform that changed nothing across regional NSW changed something here. What the panel takes, and how often it sits.
Three pathways, not two. Some work needs no approval, some needs a certifier rather than a council assessment, and the property constraint that decides which is the thing to check first.
The council reported action by action on the final year of its 2021-2025 disability plan, in the statutory pages of a 300-page annual report. Its accessibility page, rebuilt around the new plan, now links no progress reports at all.
A dual occupancy at Woy Woy, alterations and a pool at Avoca Beach, a two-lot subdivision at Ettalong Beach. Every item on the agenda carries a clause 4.6 variation document, and the agenda itself has been opened 33 times.
The new Bateau Bay stairs cost about $650,000, with $245,000 from a state fund for Crown reserves. We downloaded three rounds of that fund’s records: $2,017,745 has landed in the Central Coast LGA since 2023-24, and only two of the eight grants went to the council.
We matched 684 individual fees across the adopted 2025-26 and 2026-27 schedules, 132 and 136 pages. The median rise is 5.20 per cent and a large block of the schedule moved by exactly that. The rate peg has never applied to fees.
The adopted Long Term Financial Plan names a preferred scenario for the first time, and it assumes $31 million a year is sought through a permanent special rate variation once the temporary one expires. The base case without it: unrestricted cash at minus $405 million.
Entry to the Accelerated Development Application pathway runs through a free pre-lodgement review, and the council’s own page says you have one opportunity to be accepted. Fall short on documentation and that application takes the standard path.
Fifteen named compliance priorities across three years, the enduring ones that run underneath them, and why being listed for 2028 does not mean enforcement waits until then.
Jamie Loader becomes Acting Chief Executive Officer. A seven-member panel with delegated authority runs the search, six councillors plus one independent, and the permanent appointment still comes back to the full council as a resolution.
David Farmer retires on 2 September; an extraordinary meeting this Tuesday 28 July appoints an acting chief executive and starts recruiting a permanent one. What the handover means for a council mid-way through re-tooling itself to deliver major projects.
On 17 June the NSW Government committed $41 million to help commence the waterfront revitalisation and a Point Clare cycling and walking link. An explainer on where the transformation stands, and what is still just advocacy.
Council is asked to endorse Gosford Coming Alive 2040 on 28 July: a fast-rail-anchored delivery framework and project list with a Mayor-led taskforce. On a first-hand reading of the business paper, it carries no dollar figure and no target.
Council’s new Accelerated Development Application process, and the backlog numbers it published alongside it: 1,099 outstanding DAs at the peak, 652 now.
The refreshed Key Enabling Projects wishlist, every costed item from the Gosford waterfront to a northern aquatic centre.
The stormwater charge moved from water bills to rates notices on 1 July. What changed, what did not, and where the 3.2 per cent comes from.
The data desk
Council’s own forecast says the region grows 18 per cent in 25 years, but one district north of Wyong grows fifteen-fold while Gorokan, Kincumber and Long Jetty barely move. The whole table, charted and sourced.
People added by 2046, top four districts
Source: forecast.id population summary, 2021-2046. Full chart and methodology in the story.
Around the Coast
None of the business respondents supported the Ocean Beach Road and Rawson Road design. About 45 unrestricted parking spaces would go and about 30 timed ones be added; construction is expected from mid-2027, subject to final design and approvals.
Council has lodged a section 68 application with the NSW Reconstruction Authority for sand nourishment and a sloping rock revetment. It is a separate, faster track from the three seawall DAs, which the planning panel refused on 18 June 2026, and one that can authorise the works without the usual planning assessment or any owner’s consent.
Smart Rental Bonds reached the Coast in August and every NSW renter on 16 September: transfer an existing bond to your next place through Rental Bonds Online instead of finding a second one. The government estimates it saves around $4,000 a move. How it works, and who qualifies.
The draft Swift Parrot Species Management Plan was on public exhibition until 10 August. This winter at least 40 of the endangered birds gathered in Bateau Bay backyards, using Blackbutt trees on suburban streets.
An “Accessible Venues” brochure so a person with disability can tell which entertainment venues will work for them before they arrive. Applications closed on 31 July, the council’s EOI page says.
Frost Reserve grows from 200 to 750 square metres with a covered spectator area, designed by local riders in last year’s workshops. Target: October 2026.
Where to go on the Coast when it is urgent but not life-threatening: Lake Haven, Umina Beach and Erina Fair, all walk-in and bulk billed, plus the free kids’ hub at Tuggerah.
Transport for NSW field crews work the Erina corridor from 20 July for about two months. It is survey work, not construction, and it decides what the upgrade builds.
From the Record
News tells you what changed this week. The Record keeps what stays true: the places, projects and sagas the stories return to, cited and dated.
The saga, from first exhibition to certification.
Three lakes, four waterways, one restoration effort.
People in role, meeting rhythms, benchmarks.
Under way, funded this year, or wishlist.
The Coast’s main theatre, a decade in.
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