News Alert |

City of Ballarat has welcomed the release of the Know Your Council results for 2017-18 financial year.  

The figures, which were released today, allow residents to compare City of Ballarat’s performance with that of councils across the state.      City of Ballarat Mayor Cr Samantha McIntosh said the City of Ballarat had performed well above the average in a number of areas.    “It’s encouraging to observe our community satisfaction with community engagement has improved from the previous year, and is also above the average for ‘similar councils’ and ‘all councils’.    “It’s also pleasing to see community satisfaction relating to council decisions is also above the average for both categories.”    One area that comes of little surprise given the rise in popularity of the City of Ballarat’s Library Services, is the number of times a library resource is borrowed.    “We had 32,637 eBooks downloaded over the previous financial year, that’s up by 20.7 per cent on 2016-17,” Cr McIntosh said.    “The steady increase in visits over the last financial year are also reflecting the increased diversity of services and programs offered at our libraries.”    The data showed one of the City of Ballarat’s most requested services – waste collection – could be improved, while customer satisfaction with sealed local roads had improved from the previous year.    “Despite the challenges of the past year, it’s pleasing to see the community is satisfied with the work we’re doing on sealed local roads,” she said.    “And while there was an increase in the number of bins missed over the last year compared to the previous year, we want our community to know we’re working to improve with changes to routes and solutions developed by our staff.”    Another area the City of Ballarat performed well in was the time taken to decide planning applications, which was at 59 days - better than ‘all councils’ at 69.69.     However, the increase in resolutions made at meetings closed to the public - due to more contracts requiring approval by council - meant the City of Ballarat’s 16.38 per cent performance was above the 11.17 per cent for similar councils.    “We know there is room for improvement in some areas, and we want our residents to be confident we’re working on it. Council resolved at its meeting last week to reintroduce the Contracts Special Committee of Council to ensure that our large program of capital works continues with less time delay,” Cr McIntosh said. 

“The results complement the other ways we’re working to improve our transparency.” 

“For instance, social media and our recently launched news centre myNews have given us the ability to directly reach our residents and we know this is already improving the way we do business by providing residents with a full response and information that they are asking for.” 

Established in 2015, the Know Your Council website is designed to help the community understand the role of local councils, explore information about their municipality and compare a council’s performance to similar councils.  

It features performance data on many council services including animal management, aquatic facilities, food safety, governance, home and community care, libraries, maternal and child health, roads, statutory planning, waste collection, financial performance and sustainable capacity.     Residents can view our performance at: knowyourcouncil.vic.gov.au