YOU’D have to wonder why the Bass Coast Shire Council delayed the release of their 2024 Community Satisfaction Survey, a benchmarking of council’s overall performance against other councils state-wide and their own group of large rural councils.
Because they didn’t do too badly this year.
In fact, the 800 people who were independently surveyed in Bass Coast, 414 men and 382 women, by the Department of Government Services, scored Bass Coast’s performance better than other large rural councils on every measure except on waste management.
And apart from customer service, which got a big tick from the residents and ratepayers, the shire’s performance with waste management was 63/100, their second-highest score across the categories.
On such things as overall performance, value for money, maintenance of seal roads and even community involvement in decision making, Bass Coast came out ahead, and in the case of the condition of its sealed roads, well ahead of its peer group.
But it’s not all good news.
Non-residents rated the shire’s overall performance highest at 61 out of 100, but local residents scored the shire’s overall performance much lower at 47.
So, we look good from the outside, but locals aren’t all that impressed.
And while the ‘value for money’ response, at a score of 46, is better than both the state average and the rating given to large rural council’s generally, only one in five residents (22%) in Bass Coast rate the value for money they receive from Council in infrastructure and services as ‘very good’ or ‘good’. Twice as many reckon Council is ‘very poor’ or ‘poor’ (41%) when it comes to value for money measure.
The response to waste management is more nuanced in the survey as well.
While the residents of Bunurong ward, that is from Wonthaggi to Inverloch, hold more favourable views of Council’s waste management performance (index score of 68), in a clear indication that they aren’t happy with fortnightly red bin collections during the holidays or accessibility of transfer depot services, people on the Island gave the council the much lower score of 59.
“Despite being the highest rated service area, 15% of people volunteer waste management as one of the top three areas for improvement, along with community consultation (16%) and sealed road maintenance (15%).”
Council scored lowest in the areas of making decisions in the interest of the community and consultation and engagement (index score of 48 each), with residents particularly scathing giving the council a clear ‘F’ on both categories, 43 for community decisions and 45 for engagement.
On the measure of community decisions in particular, residents scored Council significantly lower than non-resident ratepayers (43 compared to 55). Perceptions about the success of consultation and engagement declined significantly in Bunurong ward, down seven index points from 2023 to 49.
This may tie in the community’s attitude to several things including the poor outcome on the Surf Parade path, delays in delivering neighbourhood character guidelines, the beach erosion response, and something which emerged in the past week, consultation fatigue.
“You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” said Bunurong ward councillor Leticia Laing.
Previously the Bass Coast Shire Council has said it would not release the satisfaction survey results, made available to councils statewide in July, until it published its annual report in November but this year the shire published the full report on its website on August 12.
