Survey shows how South Gippsland Shire has improved

THE South Gippsland community has been asked to rate the performance of its local shire council over the past 12 months and the results from a key independent survey are in.

With the turmoil of the former council’s dismissal, in June 2019, and two years of administrators behind it, the community likes what it is seeing so far from the new council.

They rated the Overall Performance of the shire council at 49/100, as against the Large Rural Council average of 55/100 but that was up 2 points on the previous year, and only 1 point shy of the shire's best performance rating, in 2012, of 50.

Drilling down into the level of satisfaction with the Overall Performance, only 24% said the shire’s performance was either “poor” or “very poor” as against 30% the previous year.

Those surveyed gave a big tick of approval for what council has done to improve ‘Customer Service’, up from 56 in 2021 to a score of 66 out of 100 in 2022, and the ‘Overall Direction of Council’ earned high praise as well, up by six points to 66 in the past year and by 21 points since the community was surveyed in 2019.

It was enough for the council to declare, in its latest ‘In the Know’ community bulletin, that council is “heading in the right direction”.

“Other positive indicators for South Gippsland Shire Council were that of the nine key areas, six areas were improved, one remained the same and two dropped by one point,” said council.

In June 2019, the council was dismissed after a State Government appointed commission reported “high levels of tension, conflict and discord between councillors”.

The commission also noted “that the resignations of six of the councillors within eight months and the resulting countback elections have weakened the Council’s legitimacy as a truly representative body”.

The Local Government Minister at the time, Adem Somyurek, asked the Parliament to dismiss the council for at least two years “to enable the disruption of patterns of councillor conflict, re-establishment of trust with council staff and the repairing of damage to the Council’s community standing”.

And it appears that’s exactly what’s happened.

Here’s how you rated your council in 2022

· Overall Performance 49 (47 in 2021, 55 Large Rural)

· Value for Money 44 (43 – 48)

· Overall Council Direction 51 (45 – 47)

· Customer Service 66 (56 - 67)

· Waste Management 63 (61 – 65)

· Community Decisions 48 (46 – 51)

· Lobbying 45 (46 – 51)

· Consultation & Engagement 44 (44 – 51)

· Sealed Roads 42 (43 – 45)

But those surveyed also said there’s plenty of room for improvement.

The shire’s approval rating might be trending up, but South Gippsland is still lagging behind other ‘Large Rural Shires’ like itself on eight out of nine performance indicators.

The results from the annual Local Government Community Satisfaction Survey, coordinated by the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions on behalf of Victorian councils, were published this week.

A minimum of 400 local residents and ratepayers in each municipality are selected at random for the survey.

As well as welcoming better levels of satisfaction with most of what council is doing, the respondents marked the shire down on the state of local roads and also on lobbying on behalf of the community.

“The feedback about local roads is consistent with what was heard during the Shaping South Gippsland community engagement program,” according to the council.

“Council is seeking to improve this result through the allocation of additional road maintenance funding approved in this year’s budget.”