| By The Editor
Editorial comment
The citizens of Bendigo must surely be wondering what it takes to get a message across to the local council.
Included on the agenda at this week’s meeting was a report detailing results of the annual Community Satisfaction Survey.
Commissioned by the state Department of Victorian Communities, the survey provides a report card on how the public rates council’s performance and the result, once again, was not good. Just 64 per cent thought the council was doing OK, a figure down from 82 per cent four years ago.
If the council was a school student a lot of questions would be getting asked by very worried parents.
If the council was a restaurant they would be calling in Gordon Ramsay.
While the overall result is bad, in certain specific areas the council performed abysmally.
The worst area is that of Traffic Management and Parking Facilites where the approval rating plummeted to 30 per cent.
Town Planning Policy and Approvals was next at 49 per cent and Community Engagement third worst at 50 per cent.
Fortunately the council still does some things well, with Health and Human Services, Recreational Facilities and Waste Management getting scores above 80 per cent.
Discussing the survey results at Wednesday’s meeting, councillors tried hard to discount the results.
Some were inclined to question whether the survey had interviewed enough people to provide accurate data, while others were at pains to point out the survey was, after all, just a survey, and the council had different information at its disposal which suggested things were not at all bad.
It is interesting that councillors did not find fault with the survey for results which were considered satisfactory.
Whatever your thoughts on this, important council plans use these surveys as a measuring tool, although they do not mention benchmarks.
What is alarming is a serious decline in council’s approval rating over the past four years, and the willingness of the council to gloss over it.
Agenda notes accompanying the survey details were provided by the chief executive offficer’s department and even on the matter of car parking attempted to put a positive spin on council’s position.
“Detailed research is taking place on the demand and supply of car parks in the CBD,” the report said.
“This research will guide council decisions on future provision of car parks and for improved transport options”.
What can be read into this other than a clear indication the council is unable to grasp that its performance in this important area is not good enough?
Some councillors claimed “it is all about continuing improvement” but seemed oblivious to the fact that the survey results showed virtually continuous decline.
For the past four years the same councillors have been talking about putting plans in place for “continuous improvement”, including daily newspaper advertising and glossy brochures and publications.
Clearly, this has not worked, so how can we trust them to say any of their strategies or plans this time around will?
Of course it is hard for councillors to accept that their best endeavours are found wanting by an ungrateful public.
One councillor was candid enough to state that councillors are too busy to worry about the survey, and another thought at least an hour should be devoted to talking about it.
Ratepayers and citizens may be excused for thinking that, faced with such damning evidence, the councillors and senior officers might devote many, many hours to examine the survey results from the bottom up, and determine a course of action to correct some of the problems which, after a decade of surveys, now seem to be endemic.
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