Council chief financial officer Paul Hope said the council went into overdraft from July 5 to July 10, and hit ''the maximum amount'' of $463,521 overdrawn over the weekend of July 7-10, a report tabled at yesterday's finance, audit and risk committee meeting showed.
Going into overdraft - and incurring a charge of $270.87 for doing so - was the result of a council strategy that was generally working, Mr Hope said.
The council had decided to keep its balance in its call account ''minimal'' to free up money for accounts earning a higher interest rate and it had been caught out a couple of times last year as well.
''It's nothing worrying.
''We just had one payment that we had to make a couple of days earlier than we were expecting, before an investment matured on July 10,'' Mr Hope said.
''We think it's more important to comply with the contract conditions and pay people when they're due - so we did that - and since we'd tied up an investment to mature on the day that we thought it was due, we just went overdrawn over the weekend. But it cost us very little.
The cost was more than offset by the interest earned having the money away for a longer period, he said.
