It has already bought 70,000 trees — about $42.4 million worth — and last week it committed ratepayers to another 90,000, pointing to about $54.6 million more.
And councillors voted for that without any financial analysis of increasing the tree numbers to that level.
At the 17 March 2026 meeting, the officer report financially described a pathway to 100,000 trees by 2037.
Council instead adopted a motion, moved by Cr Jordan Pritchard and seconded by Cr Lauren Jew increasing the target to 150,000 trees by 2037, plus approximately another 40,000 trees by 2055.
Watch Item 10.14 in its entirety here.
Council’s own benchmark — $75.8 million for 125,000 trees, or about $606 a tree — puts this vote at about $54.6 million in extra cost overall. That is:
For 2026/27, the visible tree-related figure shifts from about $6.45 million to about $8.98 million — about $2.53 million more.
This was not some harmless amendment, it was a major financial commitment made without financial assessment or proper financial consideration.
This was happening against the backdrop of an existing financial sustainability warning.
The Essential Services Commissioner had already warned in the ESCOSA report that Onkaparinga was in a potentially unsustainable financial position.
So the real question is why councillors were willing to support a materially larger long-term commitment worth about $54.6 million in extra cost overall after an independent regulator had already warned about sustainability.
That is not prudent leadership, it is irresponsible decision-making.
Under the Local Government Act, councils can adopt and amend strategic management plans and later deal with yearly funding through the annual business plan and budget.
That helps explain how a vote like this can be lawful on its face.
But if the Act allows councils in a financially strained position — after an ESCOSA warning that it was potentially unsustainable — to materially expand long-term commitments by about $54.6 million and leave the funding explanation for later, that exposes a serious weakness in the framework.
And if the Minister for Local Government is content to leave that framework untouched while councils under independent sustainability pressure can still vote up commitments of this scale without the financial consequences being set out first, then the Minister is part of the problem too.
Those are accountability questions.
And they are reform questions.
Because if councils can do this after an ESCOSA sustainability warning, then the problem is not just this vote, it is that the law let's them.
