Water services get low rating

THE latest residents’ survey in Central Otago provided no surprises and the ‘‘usual offenders’’ of issues caused the most concern within the Central Otago district residents, councillors heard.

Council communications coordinator Maria De Cort presented the results of the 2018 residents’ survey to the council last week.

The top four areas were service centre reception,iSITE centres, sportsgrounds and libraries, which all received between 9698% satisfaction from survey respondents.

Deputy mayor Neil Gillespie said ‘‘the usual offenders’’ had the lowest satisfaction rating in the council survey.

Water supply services and amenities received the lowest rating, of 66%, and resource consents and gravel roads were the next lowest, scoring 72% and 75% respectively.

Mr Gillespie said ‘‘the issue is, is there anything we could do’’ to improve services and satisfaction, and asked if closer analysis of the results should be done.

Council chief executive Sanchia Jacobs said the survey did a good job of ‘‘capturing a certain part of the community’’, but the council needed to work out how to get the views of groups who might not normally take part in the survey.

The survey, done between May 21 and June 17 this year, was available to every house hold online or in print and 641 people completed all the mandatory responses.

Twothirds of them were female and 59% were aged over 50.

The survey also asked respondents if they were satisfied with the performance of their elected members.

Eighty per cent of people were satisfied with elected councillors.

For community boards, Teviot Valley had the highest rating, of 94%, and Cromwell had the lowest satisfaction, of 67%.

The Alexandra and EarnscleughManuherikia Community Boards scored 85% satisfaction, and Maniototo scored 86%.