Councillors this week adopted the council’s 2022-23 annual report.
The council reported a $3.9 million deficit, about $1.8 million greater than budgeted, but councillors largely thanked staff for a relatively successful and very busy year.
Cr Andrew Noone also thanked the public for their patience after the year began with a "perfect storm" for public transport.
It began with driver shortages and sickness having a significant effect on services.
Both the Queenstown Lakes District Council and the Dunedin City Council were demanding the ORC relinquish its control of public transport.
"We were on the ropes," Cr Noone said.
"Our communities were patient and we are grateful that they were patient and didn’t riot in the streets.
"It was a pretty difficult time and I think we have to acknowledge [chief executive] Richard [Saunders], [former interim chief executive] Pim [Borren] and all the staff and the contractors that were involved in finding a way out."
Among the positive steps the council took was bringing drivers’ wages up to a "fair and reasonable" level to make bus driving an attractive proposition once again, Cr Noone said.
"From a perfect storm, we ended up with the stars aligning and they are still aligned."
Chairwoman Cr Gretchen Robertson said the annual report had a consistent theme of a rising workload and the council needing to rise to that challenge.
"It has been a particularly challenging environment around public transport.
"And we really do thank the community for the patience that they’ve shown.
"We’ve got things that we can work on. This year has been challenging, we haven’t had full schedules and yet we’ve still got people actually indicating that they’re pretty satisfied with our services, which is really good."
Cr Elliot Weir said the report showed there were areas the council needed to work on, but the trajectory the council was on was "really, really good".
Cr Tim Mepham said good financial management had been displayed over the past 12 months, "which has delivered a result that is not that far away from our budgeted deficit".
"I’m feeling very satisfied and confident in the financial management of the ORC," he said.
Aside from financial statements the annual report provided an overview of the council’s performance in regional leadership, the environment, safety and resilience, and transport.
Of the 70 service measures tracked for the report, 48 were fully achieved, six were partially achieved, 15 were not achieved and one target was not able to be measured.
