WordPress as CMS?

Hopefully someone out there will be able to offer me some advice. Ive been thinking of setting up a website about my local town. I am hoping it will be a site that will involve overtime. For ease of set up and ammendment Im thinking of using a content managment syetem. Ive looked at joomla etc but find them to be quite bulky with slow load times. I use wordpress quite a bit and am wondering about using wordpress as a cms.

My question is – Is it possible to use wordpress as a content managment site ? are there any plugins you think I will find useful ? and will I need to edited code etc or can all be doen with plug ins ?

I would like to have a news area on the site, a gallery, articles about local history etc, information on local shops, leisure facilities + all the other things you often find on your local community website.

Is wordpress up to the job ?