Ed, It’s not long ago that Clarence Valley Council (CVC) placed their proposed 2015/16 General Fund budget on display and held public meetings to present and discuss it. After years of CVC General Fund deficits in the 1 to 2 million dollar range they seemed proud to present a budgeted deficit of $268,207. They weren’t keen to admit that they had only reached that figure by transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars from reserve funds into the General Fund. In the context of a family budget, that’s like taking the kids’ savings, the family holiday savings and the Christmas present savings to pay for the family’s general living costs. Today I checked CVC 2015/16 Financial Report item 14.165/15 for council’s Corporate, Governance & Works Committee on the council’s website. I was stunned to see a recommended variation of $543,628 to increase the 2015/16 General Fund deficit to $812,235. This is just weeks after commencing the 2015/16 budget year…..what could possibly go so wrong so quickly? Well the report states $457,500 is for wages and on costs for Financial Accounting Staff omitted in original budget…….yep…..just forgot to include nearly half a million dollars in wages in the draft budget presented to the community. There are other items worth tens of thousands of dollars that were also forgotten in the draft budget according to this report. Who would like to bet where the CVC General Fund deficit will finish up? To use the family analogy we better contact EBay and list the kids, Grandma and Fido the dog for urgent sale. Bill Day, Yamba