By Molly Magennis
Residents in Maribyrnong are slightly less satisfied with the council’s overall performance in 2021 than they were the previous year, a new survey has revealed.
The annual Maribyrnong council community survey has just been released, which measures community satisfaction across a range of categories such as services and facilities, governance and leadership and customer service.
The research was conducted over the phone during October and November 2021, with 800 residents being interviewed for the survey.
While the decrease was small, overall satisfaction with council’s performance was down from 6.99 to 6.93. This rating however still remains categorised as ‘good’.
Respondents who lived in Maribyrnong were slightly less satisfied than the municipal average (6.53), however those in Braybrook were more satisfied (7.33).
Of the 39 services and facilities council is responsible for, weekly garbage collection and fortnightly recycling were recorded as more important than average, although average satisfaction with the 39 services decreased in 2021 (from 7.40 to 7.30).
More than half of those who responded said that council should acknowledge the experience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on Australia day, 6.5 per cent disagreed and 41 per cent couldn’t say.
When asked how council should acknowledge First Nations experiences, 3.6 per cent said the date of Australia Day should be changed.
Maribyrnong mayor Anthony Tran said the results are better than what council had expected given all the challenges they had faced during the pandemic.
“We know many of our residents prefer face-to-face conversations over telephone or email contact, as do we, but this was simply not possible when the priority for Council was, out of necessity, keeping its community and staff safe,” he said.
“It’s now on us to look at what we can do to improve that experience for when we may find ourselves in that situation again.”
