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Cash Back Reserves
Our City keeps twenty cash backed reserves and Council wrote a purpose for every one of them.
Four no longer say what Council decided, and together those four hold more than $20 million.
This is the story of how that happens quietly.
A reserve’s purpose statement is not decoration.
The City‘s own policy says it determines how, and for what, the money may be used. That makes the exact words worth checking against the decisions that created them.
We checked them all against the original text as created.
Created in April 2021 to buy land or commercial buildings.
Five years on it holds $10.9 million and has bought nothing.
Twelve public documents its purpose the way Council wrote it; the one that does not is the policy that governs it, and the difference is a single word that turns storage into any operational need.
$1,000,000 has already went to refurbishing shops the City already owns.
The change was never marked in the tracked changes and never named in any reports.
Three million dollars, set aside in 2021 for small ideas from the six neighbourhoods.
It has been spent once, on Grand Final week in the city centre, and on nothing in a neighbourhood since.
On Monday the policy swaps Council’s word six for identified. Identified by whom?
Were the neighbourhoods asked?
Created in 2022 to leverage big events other people bring to town.
More than half of its $1.63 million landed in Forrest Place, while East Perth, West Perth, Crawley and Nedlands have received nothing. A promise was made in 2025 that future Lightscape will include an element to boost foot traffic in West Perth - we’re still yet to see that commitment happen.
Its rule grew twice, once in a plan narrative and once inside a seven policy review, and neither change had a vote of its own.
Payments to state agencies now flow through a channel no City policy governs.
The one that works: money in, money out, every year, exactly as designed.
But the wording Council resolved lasted one meeting. The policy adopted the same night said something looser, and the money has followed the policy ever since.
Monday’s edits quietly complete the tidy up. The papers ne