Gannawarra Shire Community Satisfaction Score

Conducted via telephone interviews, the Gannawarra Shire Council Community Satisfaction Survey gathered responses from 400 Gannawarra Shire Council (GSC) residents over the age of 18 between February and March 2024.

‘Overall Council Performance’ remained stagnant for a third consecutive year on 54 out of a potential 100, placing Gannawarra in line with the statewide average. 

“Council thanks all residents who took the time earlier this year to complete the survey, which plays an important role in Council’s assessment of its performance,” stated Mayor Ross Stanton in a GSC media release.

“Our Overall Council Performance rating of 54 has been consistent throughout this current term of Council and is significantly higher than the results of four years ago, however, the survey’s results will guide how Council will improve its relationship with residents.”

According to council minutes for the July 17 meeting, overall performance hit a low in 2020 at 46, before climbing to 59 in 2021, but remains on an overall downward trajectory from the 2015 score of 68 listed in the document. A trend reflected in adjoining shires also.

Interestingly, in 2015, GSC was 8 points above the state average and 9 points above the small rural council average. 

Areas identified as needing attention are the condition of sealed local roads, which retained its score of 41 from 2023, four points behind the state average, and lobbying on behalf of the community, which fell by one to 48, two points behind the state average.

At last Wednesday’s Gannawarra Shire Council meeting, councillors discussed the results. 

In speaking to the motion to pass the survey results, Cr Garner Smith had plotted his own figures going back as far as 2014. 

“I must admit it’s a little bit better than what I had expected, I think that’s reasonably pleasing compared to the last couple of years,” said Cr Smith.

“The reality is compared to 10 years ago, this result is poor. 

“Even our strong areas of customer service and waste management, they have declined by eight points since 2014.”

From Cr Smith, 10-year chart overall performance was down by 15 points, overall council direction down by 14 points, sealed local roads down by 12 points and making community decisions down by 18 points. 

“We were head and shoulders above other councils in our category, on average.” 

Cr Smith suggested the poor maintenance of roads by VicRoads may reflect badly on council. 

“Ten or maybe twelve years ago, we had a forum where we held VicRoads to account. This council had regular meetings, maybe quarterly or every six months, where we held VicRoads to account for the state of their roads in our municipality. We were looking after our community.”  

Cr Smith went on to suggest the state government policy forced upon local councils could also be affecting satisfaction of the council.

“The Gannawarra is a community that doesn’t view the current state government particularly favourably, yet we keep implementing their ideas and imposing them on our citizens.” 

Cr Jane Ogden objected to Cr Smith’s criticism of the state government, citing that it wasn’t relevant to the motion. 

“This is absolutely relevant because we have been systematically declining; we need to find a systematic answer to solve the solution,” responded Cr Smith. 

“We are imposing high-level government ideals on Gannawarra through this organisation, and quite frankly, I believe that reflects the systematic decline in the community satisfaction that the community has in this organisation.” 

In also speaking, Cr Ogden had a chance to respond. 

“I can understand a lot of what Cr Smith is saying, but I also can see that we rely a lot on the state for our funding.

“But that aside, if you do look on page 9 again, where we are looking from 2015, you can see there was a particularly tough time council was going through at the beginning of 2020. This is even before we had COVID-19 and you can see that we’ve actually picked up a lot since then.

“Yes, we definitely need to do a lot more but I can see that not only our small rural council, but rural councils across Victoria are really struggling, we’ve got more pressure on us, with less money from governments from federal and state.” 

Cr Kelvin Burt suggested that as a set of councillors they should be setting a target.

“We don’t want to be the norm, we want to be better than the norm, so I think it would be better for all of us to set a target and go a bit harder at it next time.”