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00:00:00 Mayor Stewart: Good morning. I declare the meeting open. I would like to acknowledge that we are meeting on the traditional lands of the Kabi Kabi people and I pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. I note that everyone is in attendance. Today's special meeting is to consider the 2021-22 Nurser Council budget process consultation feedback. I understand there is a presentation from the Director of Corporate Services regarding this item. To enable this, I move that the operation of the standing orders or any relevant provision thereof be suspended to allow Council to receive a presentation from the Director of Corporate Services in relation to agenda item 1. So taken. Thank you. All in favour? Thank you. Thank you Michael.
00:01:00 Speaker 1: Thanks Councillors. I will just get the mouse. Speaker 2: And just for those who are tuning in today, copy the presentation we made available as part of the minutes of this meeting as well. So on the Councillor website. Thank you. Speaker 1: So Councillors, the presentation will summarise a lot that is in the report. So there is a slight additional bit of information available. Thank you all very much for joining us today and thank you to all of you who have joined us today for this very important meeting which is around just some of the demographic information that was collected as part of the balance the budget tool which we'll run through just to round out our understanding of who's responded and how and in what way. So councillors just in terms of the approach and as you're all aware this is our inaugural budget engagement process which we committed to undertaking and we're well into that process at the moment.
00:02:00 As part of that process we looked at trying to get feedback from a number of different channels and those channels were sort of undertaken in a way that we could maximise feedback and give opportunity for all members of the community to provide feedback if they wished. So what we did we through our communications branch we advertised the process. Fairly extensively through social media, through our newspapers, through our website, just to try and make sure that everyone in the community was aware of what we were doing and had the opportunity to participate. We as part of our normal Your Say process we developed a page on our website, our Your Say Noosa page. We embedded the balance the budget tool.
00:03:00 Which was a new innovative piece of innovation that we were trying for the first year and that tool was to try and maximise participation from the community regarding how would they, if they were a councillor, what would their priorities be but also making them balance the budget which as you know is a challenging process and we're doing that at the moment. We also allowed general submissions so it wasn't just the going through the tool, using the tools. We allowed general submissions through ideas on the Your Say page so people could put ideas in. We also allowed them to email directly through a budget email address. The second stage once we closed the balance the budget tool was to publish our 10 year capital plan and we're talking there significant 270 odd million dollars. We're proposing to invest in the next 10 years on our capital infrastructure.
00:04:00 Infrastructure and assets and to round out the engagement approach councillors offered face-to-face session. So offered community members to come and meet face-to-face for 30 minutes and discuss their priorities which has also occurred. Okay so just in terms of the participation tool because that was sort of the focus, a lot of the focus of our process has been on the tool and to try and elicit feedback. Because we can't do that. I think again in terms of educating the community on the challenges of putting a budget together the tool was a valuable sort of piece of technology that we were trying to get the community to use. So just some key stats on what came out of the online process. So we had 547 web page views so that was quite promising, that's good. So people going through to Your Say having a look at the page. And reading what's on the page including the Mayor's video and the documentation that was also attached to the budget page.
00:05:00 The average web page time was 7 minutes 24 seconds so that's not too bad. 7 minutes on a web page is pretty good. In terms of the balance the budget tool itself we had 67 submissions. And talking to our software provider Bang the Table. They considered that a really good response for a first year of consultation. Bang the Table are involved, they're not purely an Australian company, they're actually based in the US. They have been doing this process in the US for quite a few years. Now they're expanding to Australia and they have a number of councils in New South Wales and they're starting to get traction in Queensland. So I think there's one of three councils in Queensland that are using the tool as part of the budget consultation. So look I think as a first round exercise it's good, indicators are good.
00:06:00 I think it's a good base to maybe look at proceeding or as a base to move forward in future budgets. Councillor Jurisevic: In your experience have they found that increases year in year out as the process is put out for further consequent years? Speaker 1: Yeah they have. As I said you do get incremental growth but it also allows you to refine what you're doing, what's worked, what hasn't. And as part of that we also talk to them and they give us examples of other councils and even contacts and even in the US that we can talk to around how they're doing things. So in terms of the demographic and other data we collected through the tool, keeping in mind this was of the submission, the 67 submissions. You can see from an age perspective roughly 70% of those submissions were from people 30 and over.
00:07:00 Or probably even more sorry. So you're looking at more like 90% of submissions were over the age of 30 which you probably, that's not unexpected. Younger people probably find it, maybe the council budget approach. So it's a little bit bland. That's just us. But look 6% of people 18 to 29 isn't too bad either so you're looking at potentially 4 or 5 people under the age of 30 put submissions in. So that's also pretty promising. So it's obviously data that we can look at improving on in terms of potentially getting greater input from our younger residents.
00:08:00 The gender was pretty well 50-50, pretty close which is great. So even split from a gender perspective of the submissions. Postcode you can see that again the wagon wheel there looks fairly well spread between the coast and the hinterland. Other was obviously just postcodes that were put in that we couldn't somewhat. Some were in the Darwin. So whether it was a typo or just a dummy postcode. Councillor Jurisevic: Was it a requirement to put in a postcode? Speaker 1: It was, yeah. So it was mandatory. Councillor Wilkie: So absentee property owners? Speaker 1: No, just generally you would ask them to put their property postcode. Oh, property postcode, yeah. Kin Kin has a different postcode to those. Deputy Mayor Stockwell: Would they be another? Yes, yeah. Whereas Boreen pointed the same postcode as Tewantin.
00:09:00 Correct, yeah. Speaker 1: In terms of the submissions from rate payers, you can see most of the submission were from rate payers which again is positive because rate payers pay the rates. And they probably have an investment in where they want to see their rates spent which is good. But notwithstanding, we don't discourage residents from also submitting because residents, potential people that rent also indirectly pay rates through their rents. So we're not exclusively asking rate payers to participate. And you can see 99% of the submissions were residents. So i.e. you lived in the Shire which is also sort of what we're after because that's again the residents. So who are we looking after in terms of how we develop the budget.
00:10:00 And the last one we asked or another one we asked was whether they owned a business or not. Because that would potentially inform potential priorities regarding investment in things like economic development and things like that. So you can see we had, quite interesting seeing of all the submissions, 27 were business owners. So that was quite surprising. In terms of, this is one of the questions I think we had. I think Tom might have asked this question last week when we were talking through some of this was, you know, who was using what device. And you can see there that roughly 70% of the submissions were on a desktop computer. But, and look this is sessions. This is like actually a session is when you get on. Because with the tool you could actually go and you could save your work and you could come back. So of the 67 submissions there were actually 400 sessions.
00:11:00 Which was, that makes up, you know, people might have had three or four goes at putting in a, before they submitted their response. Councillor Jurisevic: Have a look, have a bit of a think about, come back and do their thoughts. Councillor Wilkie: So it indicates a certain determination to have their say by that tool. Speaker 1: It does, yeah. Yeah, you might have people coming back all at once. And we did embed quite a bit of information in the tool. So, you know, one area of expenditure they might have had to read a policy and a link to the website on what we're doing around certain things. Mayor Stewart: So that would assume then, Michael, that the people who answered the feedback are pretty well informed. It's well informed. Speaker 1: We were hoping that they would, yeah, they would be looking at the information that we linked through that particular area of the tool. And, you know, did their homework, understood what they were asking for and understood our levels of service. And then could make an informed submission. Speaker 2: I think the fact they were spending on average seven minutes on there is part of that as well. They just got the information, thought about it.
00:12:00 Councillor Jurisevic: Is there any way through any other areas of our website that we can see that they engaged or that they followed those links? Is that something that can be? Speaker 1: It's something that we, there is, I think, data, which I may not have, may not have communicated today. But there is the ability to look at, you know, in each area of the tool where they clicked. Councillor Jurisevic: Where they went down those embedded links. Speaker 1: Yeah, it probably, possibly won't tell you how long they spent. Councillor Jurisevic: But it'll tell you how many clicks on it. The information that we provided. Speaker 1: Yeah. So, look, this is, again, it'll. Some of this comes back to clicks. How many clicks. You can see in terms of our revenue within the tool we had revenue and expenditure lines. You can see that, and this isn't surprising in terms of levies and general rates had the most number of clicks. People looking at, you know, the different levies and looking at general rates. Looking at the information contained in those line items as we just mentioned.
00:13:00 Going down through the fees and sales down to waste. And some of those other areas where we actually, within the tool we said you can't really change that because it's a fixed amount. And it's not like you can go and change our unity water payment we get every year. That's locked in. So that makes sense that they couldn't, you know, that people click less on things that they couldn't change. Or probably a little bit more challenging to understand as well. Deputy Mayor Stockwell: It's like our bank accounts. There's not much interest in interest. Speaker 1: That's exactly right. At the moment. Expense lines you can see and again some further slides will highlight probably where some of the submissions were focused on in terms of expenditure. You can see that our infrastructure area, roads, bridges, buildings and parks that had the most number of clicks.
00:14:00 Environmental management not surprising. Second highest given. You know, the focus of Noosa on the environment. And then going down through our community facilities, tourism, economic development and so on. So I think when you look at, you know, there's quite a number of clicks happening on the tool, which is positive. So obviously the more clicks, the more people are investigating and trying to understand how our budget's put together. And this is alternative. This is tying back to our, you know, the approach to try and educate using the tool. Educate the community on what's, you know, how is the budget put together? What are the priorities? What are the areas of the budget that we invest in? And then obviously the better educated people are, the more they'll, they can probably understand the challenges of balancing a budget, which is the focus of the tool.
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00:15:00 Councillor Jurisevic: And also how to widen diversity in areas of council that is. Speaker 1: Exactly. Yes. Okay. So look, we probably touching off now some things in the report. And you can see that in terms of our top four expenditure categories based on the tool. So the blue, and this is in on our, in the report for anyone that's, that's dialed in, you'll see that on page five of the report, there's a couple of graphs there. One is to our top four council expenditure categories. And you can see there in terms of the average submission, so these graphs are based on the average of the submissions made, which is the grey, the grey bars there. So you can see that infrastructure, and going back to the previous graph on the number of clicks, you can see infrastructure investment. So roads and bridges and so on, and maintenance in those, you know, the, roughly the community
00:16:00 or those submissions on average. We're looking at an increase saying council could, we would like to see an increase in infrastructure spend of around $200,000. And that's about a 1% increase on the current budget, which is the blue, the blue bar there. The, it was similar when you look at waste management as well. Waste management was a similar increase. And again, this is on average. So you can see that, look, where council's heading, where our priority spend areas are, that's, you know, what submissions came in were fairly aligned. There wasn't any significant change in terms of significant decreases in those major expenditure lines, which is, again, that's, of those 67 submissions, that's, you know, it shows that there is a level of alignment with what council's currently doing with its budgeting and what the community's feedback is.
00:17:00 The other, so just a quick there, just to, again, I've just covered up on that. So we've got fairly alignment there with our current budgeting approach. And the other thing that the feedback in, within the balance, the budget tool, it also aligns back to the consultation we did in October, where we'd ask the community, you know, where would you, where would you like to see additional funds spent with council? You know, we secured that through, you know, we secured that through, you know, through the, through the year. So we, again, alignment's good. It means that there's consistency. Other expenditure categories here, you see, and again, you've got some correlation back to the number of clicks. You can see environment is probably one of those areas where the community wanted to see a fairly significant increase. And on average, that was about a 245,000 or 6% higher increase than the current budget.
00:18:00 And all the other expenditure areas around, you know, planning, building, transport, and heritage were, were roughly on average the same. And again, there was, that feedback did align with the October feedback as well, in terms of how, how the community wanted additional funds invested. So looking at some of our key areas in terms of our, you know, our, you know, our budget and our, where we collect our revenue. So you'll see that on average, in terms of our heritage levy, there was, you know, we had three quarters of the submissions were quite comfortable with the current level of our heritage levy. We saw that, you know, a 20% of respondents were looking at an increase in the heritage levy, and there was 12% were looking at a decrease. So, but on average, in terms of the heritage levy feedback, we saw that, you know, there
00:19:00 was, on average, the submissions were either keep, keep it at current levels or, or an increase. And in terms of number of submissions, that's just, you know, just going through. There, you'll see that in terms of what we asked through the, through the tool, because the tool can actually ask specific questions. We were asking them how much, or how much would you like to see the levy increase or decrease? And that's the value of, of the tool, which we'll look at, you know, exploring further in future budgets, is you can ask targeted questions, scenario questions. And in this case, as I said, of the scenarios we were asking, you know, 44 submissions out of 67 were happy with the current level of our heritage levy. 14 submissions wanted either a $2.50 or $5 increase. So that's, it's the way you structure the tool.
00:20:00 The tool helps, you know, gather information on decision making. And that's, I think that's valuable for us as an organisation and for councils to, to understand priorities and make decisions. Transport, again, was, you could see there, there was, looking at about 80%, over 80% of the respondents were either happy with current levels or they were happy with the cost of our transport levy, or they were, they were looking for an increase. And the increases we were seeking there, again, we asked scenario and we've had a, okay, $2.50, a $5 or a $7.50 increase in the transport levy. So you can see there was a roughly an even spread across those three increases of between $2.50 and $7.50. So, but again, 80% of the respondents thought that the transport levy should have increased
00:21:00 or should either stay the same or, or increase. And only 16% wanted to see it decreased. Councillor Wilkie: If I remember rightly, Michael, this was the only levy where the number of submissions calling for an increase exceeded that of those saying no change. Speaker 1: Yes, correct. Yep. And, and as you mentioned, Frank, in the, in the slide now, you'll see that that's, that's correct. There's 30 submissions. We're looking, oh, 29 submissions. We're looking for an increase in 27. We're not wanting it to stay the same. Councillor Lorentson: And to make this information more relevant and accurate, the feedback that was provided at the back of the report, there was actually one resident who made a submission that he wanted to remove the transport levy in its entirety and thought that the free buses weren't free and would like to see that removed. And I think that's really representative of the whole Shire that we have people that are
00:22:00 actually totally opposite of, of, of what we think. Speaker 1: And look, I think it's. That's why we ask the questions. Councillor Lorentson: That's why you ask the questions. Absolutely. And. So meaningful information. It is. Is what I, what I'm thinking, yeah. Speaker 1: All right. So that's transport. So if we just move on to environment, and again, you can see that the wagon wheel, which I'll put on the screen, a quarter of respondents were happy with the current level of their environment levy, which is $56 at the moment from memory. We, and again, looking at how we ask the question with the environment levy, we asked the, by the tool, were, were they happy with either no change in the levy, a decrease in the levy, an increase of $5 or increases of five, 10 or $15. And you can see we had quite a lot of the respondents were quite comfortable with an
00:23:00 increase. You can see through the tool there or through the next slide that we've had 44. Councillor Wilkie: I stand. I stand corrected. Speaker 1: 44. Yeah. This environment levy. Sorry. Yeah. 44 submissions. We're, we're looking at it for an increase. Yeah. And the most actually was a significant increase, $15, which was, which was quite interesting. No, it wasn't me. Councillor Lorentson: But what's interesting, Michael, is that you didn't ask the specific question whether you're part of an environmental group. But the question you did ask was whether you have any business. You're a business owner. And the feedback actually indicated a lot of business owners made submissions. So they're very supportive of the environment levy. So yeah. Interesting information. Speaker 1: Good correlation you made there. But again, possibly not unexpected given we knew so.
00:24:00 And the environment's very important to the community. So good feedback for councillors to consider and as part of our deliberations. Mayor Stewart: Perhaps next year, we've discussed going forward, we might be able to unpack that even further so people can potentially look at separate projects. And vote on increasing projects or decreasing funds for the separate projects in that levies or, and across all levies. Is that a potential? Speaker 1: There is, there's a lot of potential with this tool. There's obviously we started off, you know, this is the first year and we, we, we sort of set the tool up in a way that we, you know, let's solicit feedback in year one. And then obviously as part of our review process, we'll start to look at other opportunities around maximising feedback and getting, you know, the prioritisation out of the community. And that's, I think that those options are available in terms of asking those scenario questions around projects and levels of service.
00:25:00 I think that's definitely something we can look at. Deputy Mayor Stockwell: Even this, we did break it up into two categories, which was really quite interesting, the difference. So in environment management and sustainability initiatives, the area for the, the large support for increase was natural areas, including bushland reservoirs. Trail maintenance, fire management, environmental operations, and sustainability initiatives, which had, yeah, we saw a large amount of support for increase. But then when you looked at environmental levy funded initiatives, land purchases, private land conservation, et cetera, the, there was actually 51% said no change. So it's saying that what people are- 51 submissions. 51 submissions. Sorry. Yeah. People are saying it's the management of the natural areas that's becoming more important than the natural areas. And that's really, to me, that's really indicative of the sort of policy changes we have been making over recent years to provide more focus on that. Councillor Wilkie: Yeah. Actually, Michael, it was, and I'd like to pick up on that.
00:26:00 That was, my comments were based on that graph on page six, which said environmental levy funded initiatives. So anything to do with the environmental levy, no change. 51 submissions, no change. Or sorry, 76% said no change. And 18% said increase. I'm just wondering how that sits with these, these figures here, which are, seem at, at variance to that. So where in the report are these figures? Councillor Jurisevic: What page are you looking from? Councillor Wilkie: Page six. Councillor Jurisevic: Page six. Yes. Councillor Wilkie: So on the page, page six, it says environmental levy funded initiatives. No change. 51. Submissions. Up here at 17. Increased budget. No change. 12 submissions. Decreased budget. Four submissions. So. Because. That's what guided my comments previously. Mayor Stewart: I think they're taken in conjunction with the 44 that want an increase in budget.
00:27:00 And that's what comes back to what Brian was saying about the increase in fire maintenance and fire management. Is that right? Councillor Wilkie: But that's a different section. So there's a second. Mayor Stewart: So it's all under environmental. Councillor Wilkie: Management and sustainability initiatives. But then, then there's natural areas, which is funded by well, there's a separate section there. It says environmental levy funded initiatives. Yeah. Specifically to do with the environmental levy. Speaker 1: I probably need to. Unpack it. Maybe you've averaged the two, Michael. I think my gut feel is there might be an issue with that table. Yeah. I think for me, I think what's in terms of that mix of submissions on the screen is probably correct. Deputy Mayor Stockwell: Yes, there might be another explanation. Table 1 on page 6 is about expenditure. This one's about revenue. Councillor Wilkie: Oh, there you go. Actually, it's a submission summary. Good point, yeah. Deputy Mayor Stockwell: So this is what people generally thought about raising more revenue, where table 1 is about how we expend it.
00:28:00 Councillor Wilkie: No, it's all part of the same table. Table 1 extends to page 6. Deputy Mayor Stockwell: Yeah, I know, but it's the table, the top line, summary of expenditure. So two different questions. Councillor Wilkie: Okay. Deputy Mayor Stockwell: How much more would you think we should have? Yeah, ask for more money, and where should we spend it? Councillor Wilkie: Okay. Anyway, it's interesting. Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm going to make an account in the enemy here. If you overlook that answer. Speaker 1: And the way the tool worked, it linked expenditure with, you know, particularly levies. So if you wanted to increase, say, the levy by $10, it would actually then automatically increase the expenditure, so it would balance the budget. So that's... Potentially, it's that mix of, again, I'd probably need to take that away and just have another look at that. But I think, for me, it's the data on the screen is what was actually submitted in terms of those increases in that specific, that scenario question.
00:29:00 In relation to the levy. In relation to that. Councillor Wilkie: Yeah, because that's very strong, and I didn't get that indication from here. Speaker 1: So I'd probably like to take that away and just look at that environment management, you know, those two rows, and just check that, that that's correct. Yeah. Let's see what's the anomaly there. Councillor Jurisevic: There may be an element of understanding where the spending from environment management and sustainability issues, an element not out of the levy, it's actually out of the general rate. Speaker 1: Yeah, well, again, I'd probably just like to check that and see. But I think I was pretty, yeah. Yeah, what's on the, what's on the slides around those increases is probably the correct. Yeah. Councillor Wilkie: The correct. Thank you, that's valuable. On average. It's good to know. Speaker 1: Look, the, there were some other channels we use, and I mentioned that earlier in terms of the process to date. So we had ideas on your site, so it was, you know, generally, if you had an idea, you know,
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00:30:00 you could actually go onto our website. You could log the idea and, and then we, we would consider that. So we had 11, 11 contributions, which was in attachment two, and there was a number of different ideas, of course, which is great. Obviously, councillors can absorb that, and we can discuss that further as needed as part of the process. We had direct email feedback, which is in attachment three. And you'll notice there, there was a quite a, most of the email submissions were around the zero emissions, Noosa, so that they asked their supporters to, to send in their, their feedback. And it was effectively based on a template, so, which was asking for more staff resources around zero emissions, which, which is good. Councillor Lorentson: Botanical gardens, there was really good commentary about botanical gardens and untapped GEM and lifeguarding services.
00:31:00 And there was actually some really good information in that section. Speaker 2: Yeah. In fact, you get more, sometimes you get a real flavour of things out of the comments. Councillor Lorentson: Yeah, and, and balance, and balance, what I was referring to before, it just, again, more representative of the whole community when you read that in, in conjunction with the submissions. Yeah. Speaker 1: And councillors, you're aware that we've, we've had some face-to-face meetings, possibly not as many, attendees as probably, I thought we might have got there, we only had a few. It's so memorable, Michael, it's so memorable. But, but there's probably. Councillor Jurisevic: And not, they're not all, not all budget related. Speaker 1: No, no, we expected that, yeah. There's probably two ways to look at that, again, is, you know, and I'll probably, we'll review, but did we promote heavily enough, is there other ways we can do it, or the community saw, you know, potentially no need to meet?
00:32:00 Councillor Wilkie: It's the best way to understand what people feel most passionately about, and the, the depth and scale of their concerns is really valuable, yeah. Speaker 1: And we, we also published our capital. Capital plan on, on your site, and we, we had that out for a few weeks, and we, we only had two comments on that. So, again, it's, you know, on review, we'll think about if we promote that heavily enough, because I would have thought a capital, 10-year capital plan with all of those projects, we might have got some more response on that. So, in terms of prioritisation. Councillor Finzel: Michael, Michael, I did note in the email for feedback on page 49 of this report. That someone did put a, quite a detailed comment back about the general budget process. And they noted that, they made a comment that the operational plans of the Noosa Council, they feel it was lacking a little in detail. So, I think that was a good note to raise when we're looking at our policies, and considering, you know, we want to move forward with really contemporary, robust policies.
00:33:00 And I know that we're looking at the operational plan being developed in the future. So, I think that it's really good to see the staff working hard on that, and hopefully looking at ways we can give a little bit more attention to detail. Speaker 2: I can probably answer that one. I read that one as well, and when I read it, I thought it made some really good points. I've actually asked Deborah, our Director of Executive Services, to have a look at what other councils are doing with their format of their operational plans, and how we can improve ours. We're actually going through that process now. I agree with that comment, that we can improve it. And the level of spend on each of those areas that you've got is your priority? Yeah, just having a look at what we can do a bit better there. So, that was a good feedback. Councillor Finzel: That was a bit respectful. So, through the Chair, is this opportunity to invite Deborah? Was she to make a comment? Speaker 2: Well, she's working through that at the moment. Done the research to have a look at what the other councils are doing.
00:34:00 We can't really present that. Councillor Lorentson: So, would you like to give us a bit of a feedback on that? Speaker 2: Well, I don't know that you need to do that today. But certainly, we've taken on that feedback. We looked at that. We agree with that. Let's have a look at how we can look at it. That's underway. Mayor Stewart: Michael, how could we improve the process? Is the pilot the first one? How do you see this improving over the next one, the following year? Speaker 1: That's a good question. I think what we'll do is once we get through the remaining steps in this process, and I'll just quickly put it on the screen. So, what we're planning on doing next steps in terms of the engagement process is pulling together a draft budget, which will be published on your site to comment on the 24th of May through the 4th of June.
00:35:00 We'll... collate feedback from the full budget being published. We will come back to another special council meeting on the 16th. So, we'll then consider... Again, we'll have another round table. We'll talk through the feedback on the full budget. And we'll try and put enough information in that, what we put out so that people can generally understand what's in the budget and what they can comment on. We will then consider that feedback around the table. Councils can consider that. And prior to our adoption on the 30th, we can... If there are any further changes needed to the budget coming from the feedback, we can make those and then get our budget ready for adoption on the 30th of June. Councillor Jurisevic: I think you... I think the CEO has alluded to an important point there. I mean, an individual comment was enough to make us look at procedural methodology and go, you know, there's merit in that comment.
00:36:00 We'll go and review that comment. A single individual doesn't take a collective. A good comment can make us review and reflect on the way we undertake. From an overall perspective, were there lessons learnt from this for... Apart from the example that the CEO created there, lessons learnt from the procedure for this budget process but also how we... Clearly for how we engage in this process in the future? Speaker 1: I think probably experience is going to be good. I think it allows... I think a bit more planning. I think we'll probably... We'll have a bit more time to plan out earlier and start to really target, you know, specific pieces that we'll put out for feedback. Again, we'll... And back to Clare's... Clare's question. I think improvements can be on... And maybe we start asking about specific projects or initiatives we're looking at doing and... Councillor Jurisevic: Maybe outline the projects that are being undertaken
00:37:00 under those levies for that year. That's right. Speaker 1: We could put out proposed projects for feedback and ranking maybe prioritisations. Councillor Lorentson: So, Michael, do we wait to see what State's going to do in this space? Because it will be mandatory that community engagement processes are undertaken for budgets. So do we wait or we're just going ahead leading this space by starting this process? Yeah, the... Speaker 1: My understanding is the State won't be here until the Councils must consult with their community. How you do that will be up to the individual Councils, but there might be some... There'll be some probably minimum things to do, i.e. you must publish your revenue statement or your rates, proposed rate increases, where I think this level that we're going to will be... You know, if you want to go down to this level, it will be well in probably meeting the minimum requirements of legislation. But you're right, the legislation will come in.
00:38:00 Speaker 2: We've had a head start, so we're ahead of the game. And whatever comes out, we will at least have met the minimum requirements of what we're already doing. The question is just how we refine and keep making it better over time. Councillor Jurisevic: Well, I would assume the smaller Councils will have a greater challenge in their engagement because of the capacity to deliver and go through that process. So, I dare say there'll be some minimum standard that the State will set and then expectations for larger Councils to engage more. Councillor Finzel: Michael, given we're looking at, you know, leading the way in the space and innovative and being ahead of the pack, which is fantastic for NISA, we're different by nature, just wondering under the Providing Community Facilities and Service Feedback, page 5 of 51 of the report, it says other services with community development. As we're looking at towards refinement, is there any chance that we could consider providing the tool and the question specifically back to, you know, our vast community groups
00:39:00 so that they can really drill down on getting their feedback? Speaker 1: Look, that's... Again, on that review, I think we might look at, OK, is there a different consultation approach in terms of targeting certain groups for feedback and input? Councillor Jurisevic: You know, maybe... Speaker 1: So they're aware. They're aware that the process is happening and getting them to use the tool. And possibly, you know, as we do that review and look at next year's process, we might do some work beforehand as a group to go, well, what areas do we want to really target rather than a broad, you know, here's our key spend areas and what's your feedback? We could start targeting specific areas and ask more detailed questions, which I think will, you know, again, the outcomes are we want responses, we want to know what the community's thinking. Speaker 2: And targeting, that's good, you know, if you're looking at, you know, might have a set of priorities and might use the heritage, you know,
00:40:00 as an example, you might have five priorities and want to ask people who use the heritage what are the most important things. The danger, though, of getting to that level and saying if you only ask the heritage people what's the most important thing Council could spend money on, Councillor Wegener: well, they're going to say heritage Speaker 2: if you ask the business community, the economic development, whatever it might be. So you've got to look at how you ask everyone about the overall priorities so you get that balanced view. But then if you want to target particular sectors, it might be about the priorities within that sector. Councillor Lorentson: And I think under your community engagement policy, that's actually detailed as a guiding principle where you actually say that random is preferred to selective audiences. Speaker 2: You tend to go to a particular group where you're after, or call it subject matter experts or you're after on a particular subject matter, but if you're looking for an allocation or feedback about how the Council should be allocating its priorities overall, then you need to have a broader cross-section. Councillor Jurisevic: I would hope within those individual organisations that we deal with, like community organisations, the 300 plus community organisations,
00:41:00 that we're aware of their planning and working with them on their forward planning and that comes in with the conversations we have with them as part of our general business with those organisations. We've got that in our day-to-day activities. We understand their needs and their priorities as a result of the conversations we have with them dealing with them every day. Councillor Lorentson: My question, and I don't know if this is information that we can sort of seek from somewhere, but I keep going back to the amount of submissions, 67, and is that number enough of a sample size to represent the whole community? So my question is, with our other, have your say, I know with short-term local laws, I've asked the question how many submissions have been received and I was actually quite surprised, 70. So this is actually, as you say, good, but is there a formula or does it work on percentage of residents?
00:42:00 Is it 10% of good sample size? Is 5% of total population good sample size? So that we know that if we're relying on this information to make better decisions, it's actually representative of whole community. Speaker 1: Good question. And I'm not a statistical expert in terms of relying on sample size for... Councillor Lorentson: No, that's why I made random calls to see what's the feedback. Speaker 2: We do other surveys and we've done a survey over the years, in fact, we've got our regular two-yearly customer service survey, community service survey about to go out, where we survey about 400 people and that's on a random basis. We get professional marketers to do that too, random numbers and lots of stuff and get the right demographics. 400 generally gives you plus or minus 5% accuracy in terms of the scale, but that's a very expensive way to do surveys. Yeah. And we do that same survey every two years and that looks at what level of service we provide.
00:43:00 Are people happy with those services? And we'll have those results in two or three months. That gives you an idea of the sort of numbers where you start to get some sort of statistical validity. Councillor Jurisevic: It's another arrow in the quiver, really. It is. Another tool that we can utilise to see that the feedback that we're getting is consistent and that the directions we're taking are consistent with community opinion. I would imagine if there was a large level of dissatisfaction in the community, we would have had a large input on one particular area. Mayor Stewart: Michael, the publishing of Council's 10-year capital plan for feedback, what were the big priorities that came out of that? Speaker 1: There were... Well, there weren't many submissions. No, but from that small... Speaker 2: And that surprised me. If you'd asked me at the beginning of this process what we'd get the most comments on, it would be the capital words, because people want to see what's happened to their road or park or whatever. Speaker 1: But I think there was... Mainly it was around recreational equipment.
00:44:00 So when you're looking at the value of our capital program, you know, equipment in parks is... You're not talking big dollars. Mayor Stewart: That was what people... Speaker 1: That was basically the two responses, and whether the second respondent saw the first response and got on the bandwagon. But I think possibly I'd like to explore the capital side of things more for next year, because when you're looking at, you know, where's the significant investment for this Council over the next 10 years, it's in capital, talking $270-odd million. There is changes coming to the tool that I'm aware of, and I've got a session next week with the software provider, and I think one of those changes will be the ability to prioritise. So you can actually then... And, you know, if I could think where this is heading, you know, we would put our 10-year program on and we would allow prioritisation, but within what we can afford. You could say, OK, well, here's our program.
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00:45:00 How would you prioritise it in terms of spend? And then it would be good to get that feedback to see, again, are we... From a capital point of view, are we aligned with the community's expectations or not? Because I think operationally, in terms of the tool, there's A, lack of responses, and B, alignment with previous surveys, the 2018 Community Satisfaction Survey, similar sort of outcomes in terms of where people want to see money spent and where their priorities are. I think there's general alignment, so probably why we're not, as Jo mentioned, why we're not seeing a... You know, if they weren't happy, they'd let you know, and we know that. So, but I think generally we're aligned, but capital investment's probably one of those ones we'd like to dig down a bit further. Councillor Jurisevic: Well, again, there's an element of capital investment as well comes out of the asset management plans we've been putting into place. If the asset management plans say the assets are at an acceptable level of maintenance or replacement, that will guide the level of spend in those areas.
00:46:00 Playgrounds, for example, we may have... The number of playgrounds versus the number of years that that equipment is... The life of that equipment versus the number of playgrounds we have over the number we need to replace each year to average that out over 15, 20, 10 years, five years, whatever it is, would be a formula. Councillor Lorentson: Is there a question, Joe? Councillor Jurisevic: Element. Element there. That's not a question, it's a comment. I'm assuming that's how we would approach something like that. Speaker 1: But, you know, even the comment for me is, like, would we go out further and say, you know, is replacing playground equipment like for life, is that something we should be looking at in terms of... No, because the comments were around fitness equipment, and it's, like, looking at our demographic maybe per suburb, to say, well, hang on, you know, should we be looking at different types of equipment in our parks, not just swings and slides? Councillor Jurisevic: Well, that's a valid comment that came through,
00:47:00 that there wasn't enough equipment for a particular age group. I think it was 12 to... 16 to 24-year-olds that we didn't have something like... enough of that. I mean, do we look at those sort of comments and look at the number of half-court playgrounds or skate parks or things that cater to that age group and all exercise equipment that have been requested? I think that's anything more on your presentation. Speaker 1: I think I've covered everything in the presentation. Deputy Mayor Stockwell: I've got one or two questions. In terms of that feedback on the capital works, it exemplifies the value of putting information into the public because there is one there that's focused on Kin Kin. And a lot of that information then went into the Kin Kin community newsletter. That's right. And that really clearly highlighted that the person, it may be the same, but the person who both those people denounced and said, we think we deserve better. And that came back to councillors. So that's what's good, is the people in their local area saying, no, you need to do better. And I think that's the answer.
00:48:00 That's a good outcome. My other one was just a clarification and in Appendix 1 for the multiple choice questions. The page. Appendix 1 is straight up the main report on page... Councillor Lorentson: Nine. Deputy Mayor Stockwell: Nine. And the issue is several times. It gives results of the multiple choice questions. Touching. So I'll give an example. So the example on page 38 is for economic development spending. So you... You give the data for submitted responses and clicked responses. And so just the first question is, what's the difference? And do you think we... What would you... Can we glean anything from the clicked responses versus the submitted responses? Speaker 1: It's... Clicked is people that have gone onto the tool.
00:49:00 They've clicked on things. They've had a look. They might have changed things, but they didn't actually say, well, I've balanced the budget. I'm going to submit it. So it's probably just demonstrating that people are doing a lot of clicking, but maybe not submitting. And my discussions with Livingston, who are also going through this process at the moment, they've got similar sort of results where a lot more clicks, less submissions, because people either sort of might get sick of it. It's all a bit too hard or... Councillor Wilkie: They might have just been seeking information. Speaker 1: Or they're just going in having a play going, well, I don't really want to submit anyway, but I'm going to have a play and click on things and maybe just see how it works. Councillor Jurisevic: Well, I'm interested to see what the process is that council can put forward. Speaker 1: And then... It's good that... Deputy Mayor Stockwell: I thought the way you did it was typically with the volume. That does suggest... It does give you an indication of where the interest lies. Speaker 1: Yes. Deputy Mayor Stockwell: And just a further clarification on a question just we talked earlier.
00:50:00 In the click responses, just be aware, I was trying to look at the comparing the results. Don't compare the results on a percentage basis because the formula, there's a glitch in the formula on the click responses, so all the percentages are wrong. Some categories, a lot of categories don't add up to 100%, and one category adds up to all over. So just look at the raw numbers. Mayor Stewart: Thank you. Does anyone have any other questions for Michael? Do you know of any other council who's doing this level with this many sort of variants or opportunities for our community to provide feedback? Do you know if anyone else is going to that level of detail across so many platforms? Speaker 1: The... I know that Livingston are... You know, they're in this space and they're heavily involved for where we're at at the moment. So I think they're probably, you know, line ball with us. I'm not sure. I know Gold Coast are looking at the tool and they're using it. Councillor Jurisevic: Livingston are another day another way of doing it. Yeah. Yeah.
00:51:00 Speaker 1: But look, without sort of doing a survey and just knowing some councils that have been doing consultation before, it's purely just putting their budgets out Councillor Jurisevic: when they're pulled together. Speaker 1: It's not going through, you know, prioritisation, balancing the budget, education, and I think that's the key here I think for us has been about can we educate as well as get meaningful feedback. Speaker 2: Yeah. A couple of councils have done the basic, you know, has published the draft online that people have a look at. Gympie had done that for a while and Southern Downs was another one. You know, a few town hall meetings but not sort of the interactive nature of it to have a look at the detail. Speaker 1: But the Department have contacted me and they have been having a look, the Department of Local Government, and I think they're keeping an eye on what we're doing as well, which is good, because they're trying to understand what's, for them it's about, again, engagement by communities in the budgets. Councillor Jurisevic: Use us as a pilot scheme for what they may present. Speaker 1: Yeah. But just knowing, well, what's happening out there already
00:52:00 and then how can that potentially influence policy and legislation. Councillor Lorentson: And Michael, have we locked you in Trent into a 20-year employment agreement? Mayor Stewart: It's not on the budget. Speaker 2: And you won't. Catherine, just be on that part. Just be aware this has had a lot of extra work to key staff at this time. So, you know, we can create anything we want, but it's a resource issue as well. And it's already a very busy time of year. Absolutely. So when we're going forward, we need to look at what's the cost-benefit analysis, so to speak, what's the benefit of doing more and how will we use that information to guide our decision making. And some of that other information. Rather than just talking for the sake of it. Councillor Jurisevic: Along with some of that other information that's been presented for our budget process. Yeah. So credit to yourself and your team, Michael, Absolutely. on the work that you've put forward and the presentation here. Mayor Stewart: Well, on that note, I move that our standing orders be resumed. Thank you.
00:53:00 So back to item number one on the agenda. I move the staff recommendation in the report that council note the report by the Director of Corporate Services to the special meeting date of the 23rd of April, 2021 regarding the 21-22 budget process, community consultation outcomes, and note that councillors will consider the feedback received during the continuing development of the 21-22 council budget. Do I have a second? I seconded Madam Chair. Speaker 1: Thank you. Mayor Stewart: Would anyone? I'll keep this brief. I think we've covered it all. Look, thank you very much, Michael and Trent and all the team. As we've heard, we heard earlier that the budget tool we're only one in three councils across Queensland to use that. Michael, you know, you've alluded to the fact that we're a leader in this space. LGAQ are monitoring what we're doing to look at it across other councils. So that is really a credit to you and the Corporate Services team, Sky and yourself. So thank you. Look, the counselling for purposes at home
00:54:00 for the people listening, the counselling engagement process project page by Your Say was implemented. The Balance Your Newsy Council operating budget participation tool was implemented. Face-to-face discussions with councillors was implemented and enabled residents to discuss budget priorities with their councillors. General submissions regarding community budget priorities on Your Say webpage was encouraged and promoted and implemented. The publication of council's 10-year capital plan for feedback was implemented. This is a great platform. It's a first budget consultation. We'll expand it into next year. We've talked about where we can improve that level of service and unpacking certain projects. We take on board, Michael, what you said about that and I just want to thank you again, you and all the team, because this is a great initiative and we thank you very much for your hard work. Thank you. Councillor Jurisevic: Thank you. And, Chair, I'd like to follow up with that in thanking those people who have taken the time to give us their input, taken the time to spend seven minutes or more
00:55:00 online, in an average, to give us their feedback. Those people that took the time to come in and visit councillors and ask for a face-to-face meeting and those people that have made email submissions that the CEO has alluded to. One comment alone has made council go back and say, we can do things better. Thank you for your feedback. We'll review that and try and make those improvements. So even down to the email level, everything is listened to, everything is read, everything is acknowledged and everything is taken on board in the process. Will we appease anybody with the changes that we make as a result of that feedback? Likely not. But that feedback has been heard and will guide us and help us in that principal direction of budget for 2021. Thank you. Thanks, Joe. Do you want us Mayor Stewart: to talk to this?
00:56:00 Councillor Wegener: I just think this whole enterprise was fantastic. It really gave a lot of insight into what the community is doing. The community is doing. I think that we should carry on for the next few years. I think it's a good balance. It gives so much respect to the people of Noosa to give a really detailed acknowledgement and input into our systems. I think it is far beyond what I would expect other councils to do. And I would never have expected this actually. It's more than I would have expected a council to ever have put forward the areas where councils stepped in where the market can't actually succeed in doing things. For example, the sustainable transport, the heritage and the environment levies. It's interesting and it's nice to see the public is really supporting those saying, yeah, we want you
00:57:00 to move forward with these things because this is where the council, the local government can step in and do things and it really highlighted those and it also shows that we're doing, we're on the right path and they want us to do it even more which is really, really exciting. So I just think this is really terrific. I thank you guys so much for putting the effort into this and I hope that you continue doing it because it's just, it's a real step forward and it's very innovative and it's just what NUSA does. Councillor Lorentson: I pulled out Council's Corporate Plan 2017-2037. Under Council's Corporate Plan, community engagement is identified as a priority and best practice. It's also embedded into almost all of Council's operation. Under the local question,
00:58:00 Governments and Local Government Act, 2009, community engagement and consultation is a statutory obligation. As councillors, we have a statutory obligation or duty to engage with the community and to encourage and assist participation. In particular, there's a principle stated in Section 4 that includes democratic representation, social inclusion and meaningful community engagement. This, councillors, is a priority and is how we make better decisions. Any processes that involves the community in problem solving or decision making must be encouraged. So thank you Michael and Trent and staff for providing us with a meaningful, interactive and deliberative tool to find out what matters to the community. And thank you to the 67 submitters for your feedback. What you say and what this community says matters
00:59:00 and will help inform our budget decisions. Councillor Wilkie: Look, an enormous amount of work has gone into this by the staff so I thought it was worthy of a prepared statement in response also. So please bear with me councillors. The new initiative was advertised through social media, website, local newspapers. It was open for a month from March the 1st to March 29th. Apart from encouraging general submissions via email and the Your Say page it involved a new balance your Noosa Council operating budget function. This involved a description of and costs involved in the running of all aspects of Council's operations. It allowed residents to change spending priorities while still having to balance the budget. The intention was to enable residents to see how their funding choices affected other areas of Council operations. While the page itself had 547 views, 67 people went to some effort to give feedback by balancing the budget. Their feedback
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01:00:00 suggests that current spending levels for core Council work like maintenance of roads and bridges, community development, library services, aquatic centre, leisure centre, art gallery, Cooroy Butter Factory, waste collection, planning, health, customer service and holiday parks were about right. But there were very strong indications that more needs to be spent on environmental management in particular natural areas, trails and fire management. There was also support for an increase in all levies to be increased back towards pre-COVID levels with a request for rises in environment and transport levies and the projects they support the strongest. Council's proposed 10 year capital plan was also provided for comment. We received a loud and clear submission from the Kin Kin Community Association about the timing of long awaited projects. Plus there were also face to face sessions to allow residents to discuss budget priorities directly with Councillors and although these sessions were not incredibly well attended nor were the topics always directly
01:01:00 related to the budget they were enjoyable and most useful in understanding the depth and breadth of a resident's interests and concerns. Although overall submissions were relatively few and some would say this was not a representative sample of our community they have been heard and we will respond. Because the value of such a process ultimately is measured in the minds of the residents who took the time to submit. So to them I would also like to say thank you and assure them that I am not the only one around this table who will be taking this feedback on board and looking at shaping the upcoming budget accordingly. We are slightly ahead of the trend of Councils engaging publicly on budgets and will become a legal requirement so this exercise has been extremely useful in helping guide our decision making for the 2021-22 budget and also learning on how the process can be improved in the future. Michael thank you please pass on our thanks to your staff it has been an enormous undertaking and we are grateful to you. Councillor Lorentson: Thank you.
01:02:00 Councillor Finzel: Well this is a great day and I would like to thank all the executive staff who have put an input in to Michael and the team and the community who took the time to have their say. It's really great to know that we are in a Council that acknowledge that the community's voice matters and that we have delivered on some of our promises that this Council would be open responsive and transparent. In saying that we have achieved some of our goals through this process to the Noosa community back from the operational plan that our community is connected safe and happy and able to meet their potential. Secondly the Noosa Shire is committed to making sure that we have excellence as Council and I believe we're heading towards that today. Moving forward although this has been a base introduction
01:03:00 I believe we've set a fabulous foundation to move forward to further refine the project, improve it and offer consistency to our community who now can rely on us to create opportunities for our community to give their feedback towards how we spend their money and how this Council operates. I think it was given that one person on page 43 of the report encapsulates everything we've done and they would like to say some of the decisions and the way Noosa has been run since the last Council election have been outstanding. So I think this is a fabulous I don't know like a launch for this new Council to really deliver and open up our doors and windows be outward facing and open those challenge no channels of communication which has been challenging. So we are different by nature and I'm looking forward to a great future where we can deliver
01:04:00 robust policies that support what the community wants and we can financially stay within our budgets. So thank you everyone. Thanks. Deputy Mayor Stockwell: Yeah, it's been an interesting process and quite rightly Councillor Lorentzen mentioned the concept of a representative sample. So I thought I'd focus my comments on what we can glean from the statistics that we got back because rarely does community consultation result in a representative sample. So we know that things like where we get citizens juries there is an overt attempt to get a representative sample by random sampling through the community. The CEO has talked about where we're doing these regular surveys it is important to try and get a sufficient number so that the results can be compared from year to year. And it's clear that the number of fully made submissions would not pass the Chi Squared test as being a representative sample. But I recall back when I was first
01:05:00 in the community consultation I was doing rounds of the community I worked in and we were doing on conservation and sustainability planning and everywhere I went I'd get about 10% of the population to turn up farmers, teachers, kids. Michael's equivalent the finance director he thought this is a great idea I'll do the same thing for the budget. One person showed up. It's not something that gets the juices going of many people. But some of the statistics are really important. And one's been highlighted is that over 550 people spend an average of 7 minutes. That equates to more than 4000 minutes which equates to just over 67 hours of people trying to understand a budget and making comments. If we'd held a town plan held a meeting a good old fashioned town meeting for an hour and got 67 people to come up and got their feedback we'd be really happy.
01:06:00 And that's what the tool did. If I heard some gripes it was all about oh I can't reduce this enough to make this more. And that's our real world. You know how many of us around the table would love to seal 100 kilometres of gravel road in the Shire. I think we all would. How many people would like to put up the rates of several hundred percent to do it? None of us. So they're the real worlds of budgeting. And the other thing is really important I think you know we talked about average. It's another statistic in this case is probably you know the average of seven minutes is probably not a good measure of central tendency. Probably what the graph looks like in terms of times on the website is a lot of people not spending much time and a few people spending a lot of time. So the quality of the information is good because it means it's been considered it's been thought about it's not just
01:07:00 you know reading something in a paper getting annoyed about it and throwing in what someone else has said in social media. It's about a considered opinion. And we can see that through a whole lot you know if you get a trend it should be consistent through all your advice and whether it was the amount of clicks or the amount that people think should be increased it's really consistent. You know there was as we have been told a really clear message that people in Noosa still think it's important to invest in our environment but it was nuanced. It wasn't you know like we used to spend all the environment living on buying land where the feedback is we want to spend more of the money on managing natural areas. That's really important feedback. We saw that the other big one was about sustainable transport and how we do that because that's probably a response that you know people see not just from addressing congestion but addressing our need to reduce our emissions by getting more active transport requires a lot more investment.
01:08:00 So those two combined is really a statement of where our community has always been probably 50 years. So the fact that most people were interested in roads and rates and doing work that once again is just indicative that's still important. These other things protect our lifestyles and our view about what's important about living but the day-to-day stuff is also important. So to me it's been a very valuable exercise. I think the tool is good and if people got frustrated and didn't submit that's also good because I'd like some budget session to get frustrated and walk out too. So they've got the benefit we don't. Mayor Stewart: I just want to acknowledge also that the former mayor and former council actually brought this in 2019 about more consultation and more of a budget process. So I'd like to acknowledge that because we took that baton and we said we'd do it last year and we couldn't because of COVID. So here we find ourselves but I'd like to acknowledge the three councillors at that table who instigated this process in 2019 and the former mayor.
01:09:00 So COVID as I said we couldn't do it. We're here now. I'd like to again thank nearly those 550 people who all took that time. That's incredibly important. That's what drives our feedback and I'd encourage our residents over the next few years going forward to really get on board because it's a great resource and what those decisions drive our decisions. So thank you again to the residents. Everyone has said that and look forward to this the ongoing process. As I said this is a pilot. This is the first the first Seinfeld episode wasn't the best. I'm sure going forward we'll get there too. So thank you Michael. All in favour of that's unanimous. Thank you. Thank you.