Sutherland Shire Council’s online survey on how it should meet major financial challenges received nearly 1000 responses in the first four days.
The council is aiming for a minimum of 4000 completed surveys over four weeks to the wide-ranging survey launched on Monday, and says it’s the quickest response rate for an exercise of this size.
A spokeswoman said it had “sparked lively debate”, particularly about “trade-off” options, where participants have to nominate which of three options for the future they prefer most.
This section of the survey had led to most inquiries.
General manager Scott Phillips said the survey was not designed to collate a list of projects or ideas for council to pursue, but rather to elicit the sentiments and priorities of the community.
“Based on the community forums we have already held and the feasible scenarios available to council, we developed a list of 30 options,” he said.
“Some of these are designed to save money, some are designed to raise money, and some are options that respond to the growth targets that the state government sets for us.
“What we’ve done is put them together to identify which of these options have more support from the community.
“Survey users are asked to pick one of three options, which reflect scenarios council face, and treat it like a ‘trade-off’.
“This is to allow council to understand community sentiments and what they may be willing to trade off.”
Mr Phillips said the council was not in a position where it could “opt out”.
“We have to make changes and ‘doing nothing’ is not an option because we have to continue delivering services that support this community,” he said.
”We want to stimulate debate and invite the community to participate by telling us how we should tackle some of the challenges we are facing, because we can’t do this alone.”
Fill out the survey at: http://bit.ly/2ABaz3l
