Candidates must address community

The race is on to elect nine new councillors. Some candidates are previous councillors who want another crack.

Others are running on slashing rates platform. It’s time for a re-think on how council and councillors engage with our community.

Three months ago, council quietly published the results of the annual independently-run, community satisfaction survey on their website.

The results were horrendous and show a continuous downward trend in community satisfaction with council.

The independent consultants who conducted the wide ranging survey of residents noted that “Baw Baw Shire Council’s performance significantly trails both the large rural and state-wide averages". In truth, the results are among the worst in the state and show something is rotten in the State of Baw Baw.

In 2016, council's overall performance was rated at 48 per cent, a six point decline on the 2015 result.

Satisfaction with community consultation was also down for the third year in a row at 48 per cent and community opinion on council’s overall direction was also shocking at 46 per cent.

All these scores keep dropping for the past three years and now have hit less than 50 per cent on the major indicators. If this was my sons school report that would be a lot of Fs for F-A-I-L.

It's time to ask candidates how will they ensure community members have the opportunity to be involved in decision making? What are their ideas to stop and reverse the continuous downward slide in community perception of council?

It won't be improved by ‘more of the same' such as the huge cuts to community engagement and community focused areas like youth services, social policy and community planning. It won't be fixed by slashing more services. It won't be fixed with a continued obsession on roads.

It will be fixed by authentic community candidates who have a passion and track record for genuine community engagement that speaks to us all. I invite you to think about this when you vote for your councillors this election. C Gray Drouin your sexual urges, no worries the council will help you. If you cannot pay your rates up front, they will slug you an extra nine per cent. In other words, support the irresponsible and slap down the struggling. Roger Marks Drouin

Last time that we heard a “peep" from Michael Leaney regarding matters regarding council was the plea for his hare-brained idea of redrawaing the electoral boundaries to remove our beloved area from Baw Baw to Latrobe, because it made geographical and economic sense to him.

Remember the outcry at this time? Well, well, well, has he recently travelled the “road to Damascus" or is this recent foray into the political scene a surreptitious ploy to white-ant the Baw Baw Shire Council to his own ends?

There is an old adage which is “a leopard doesn't change its spots". Michael Higgins Erica