Port Phillip spends about $50,000 annually on an independent survey of community satisfaction with council services. You may have been one of the 900 residents interviewed by telephone in early 2024 to compile the current report.
The council received the 2024 report midway through last year, several months before the council elections in October. Councillors were briefed on the results, but the report was not made public until late November or early December, when it was added to the council website without ceremony or announcement.
Report found council was rated below other metro councils
These quotes from the report’s executive summary might explain the delay:
“Perceptions of the council’s overall performance declined for a second year running and are now at their lowest level in 10 years.”
“The council performs significantly lower than the Metropolitan group average and in line with the State-wide average for councils for the majority of metrics.”
What did the council do with this information?
TWiSK can only imagine the reaction from the 2020-2024 councillors to these findings because they said nothing publicly.
Meanwhile, most other councils were making their community satisfaction results publicly available in the months before the state-wide council elections in October 2024.
Voters and candidates (except sitting councillors) were kept in the dark
Port Phillip did not make their results available until after the elections. This is deeply concerning because candidates and voters may have been influenced by the findings had they been released.
TWiSK asked former Mayor Cunsolo for her recollections of receiving the results and the actions that followed. She referred the question to CEO Chris Carroll, who promptly replied as follows (presented in full as received 21 February):
“The councillors don’t make decisions around the release [of the results] – it’s something managed by officers. The delay in this case was an operational oversight – we’ve had some changes and acting arrangements in the team that manages this – they were advised by a resident in late November and addressed it the same day.”
And now we feel even more dissatisfied. Do you?
Editorial: Is this a grievous breach of trust?
We are not ready to answer that question yet because we don’t have all the facts. But we find the idea that this was an operational oversight hard to believe.
We know councillors were briefed on the findings. We assume that most senior managers were privy to the findings. We assume that all senior managers were on high alert about election protocols. We assume that many officers were using the findings to focus their activities and improve performance. We note also that many editions of the monthly and quarterly CEO Report have been tabled since receiving the report and it was never mentioned.
But we do know that it was not published until an unsuccessful candidate contacted the council on 26 November, at which point the report was uploaded to the website without announcement. The council elections were concluded on 25 October.
At the very least…
The public deserves an explanation, including the key dates in the timeline between (and including) the receipt of the report and its publication.
The current councillors and council leadership should take public steps to ensure community trust.
After all, one of the findings of the report was…
“Good communication and transparency with residents about the decisions the council has made in the community’s interest provides the greatest opportunity to drive up overall opinion of the council’s performance. Currently, the council performs poorly in this area (index score of 49).”
JWS Report Page 24
Read Trevor White’s report on the report
Trevor White sparked our interest in this topic when he asked questions at last week’s council meeting. He’s yet to get his answer in full.
