The Council has been given the results of a recent Community Engagement Survey, so it will be interesting to see if they pay any attention to the expressed wishes of the people they represent.
On a satisfaction rating of 1 to 10 the Council scored barely a pass mark at 5.9. When you consider council employees and their friends and family would have been highly motivated to fill out a survey form, this is an ordinary result.
When respondants were asked the question: What is your greatest wish for the Shire, one of the strong responses was "Improve Shire processes". Hear, hear! Another was "Maintain heritage buildings..." Zinneckars House springs to mind.
A Wishing Tree exercise yielded Number 1 wish as "Getting Trucks off the main street'', so lets see if the by-pass comes back onto the agenda anytime soon.
Asked to rate and rank a list of 44 possible spending and planning initiatives put forward by Council staff, respondents ranked improvements to the Shire offices as 42nd, but its too late for that message to get through, because they have already budgeted to spend around $200,000 making themselves more comfortable this year.
Re-activation of planning for that heavy-haulage deviation around town was ranked 6th most important.
Asked to rate their satisfaction with 44 different Council Services, respondents put public toilets, parks and the visitor centre at the top, with town roads down at 15th and rural road maintenance at 22nd.
Issues which residents thought important, but with which they were highly dissatisfied were Council's long-term planning, financial management and community engagement. A wake-up call if ever there was one!
