I attended the Orange City Council meeting at Bowen Public School Hall on Tuesday 18th February, and the Future City Strategy presentation beforehand. It was lovely to hear from the School Principal about the great achievements at the school over the last few years. It is a pity that the local media did not report on her speech as it was very illuminating and deserves celebration. One of the statistics that I noted was that the since 2010 the success rate in literacy and numeracy had increased from 20% to over 80% now.

I know of some people who were very disappointed that there was no livestreaming of this meeting as they normally watch at home and enjoy the entertainment.

The report on the agenda that I found most interesting was the Quarterly Budget Review and Progress Report for Quarter 2 of 2019/20, and the recommendation that it was acknowledged passed with little comment from Councillors apart from the Mayor congratulating the staff on a hard task well done.

I wrote about the first Quarter Review in September. It is not necessary to report on Performance Indicators as part of the Quarterly Review. The requirement is ‘the General Manager must ensure that progress reports are provided to the council, with respect to the principal activities detailed in the Delivery Program, at least every 6 months…. Councils may choose to report on the status of projects and activities that are not running to time, quality or budget…. Councils can, if they wish, adopt a more detailed form of reporting. However, they should carefully consider the benefits to be achieved by this and the resources required to compile the reports.’ (Division of Local Government Integrated Planning and Reporting Manual for Local Government in NSW).

So, it may be a hard task well done by the staff, but apart from the Quarterly Budget Review (on which I will comment another time) there is no need to do quarterly Progress Reports on the ‘Delivery/Operational Plans’.

So, this should have been the General Manager’s 6 monthly report on the progress of the principal activities detailed in the Delivery Program, not a quarterly report on the Operational Plan.

I wrote about accountability and Integrated Planning and Reporting in January and I am critical of Orange City Council’s plans and reporting. The Community Strategic Plan and Delivery Program need to have static targets/measures so that performance can be assessed. They should not be moved forward a year every year. Essentially, it is hard to hold anyone accountable if the goalposts keep moving.

So, I thought I would point out some of the issues in this Quarterly Progress Report to provide examples of how difficult it is to assess Council’s performance. The report includes narrative on highlights which are clearly taken from media releases as the language emphasises the promotional rather than the factual, for example: ‘Orange residents noticed changes to lighting along Summer Street…..’. The Communications Department does seem to have a lot of influence. I have frequently complained about the website as I often get a Council blog on a topic when I am searching, rather than the actual document I am searching for.

The Progress Report uses traffic lights.

A Guide to the Traffic Lights is given:

In the report to 30 September, of the 272 performance indicators, only 3 were orange and none were red.   In the report on the quarter to 31 December, of the 261 performance indicators, only 5 were orange, none were red and 256 were green.

It is practically impossible NOT to get a green flag. There are many examples of actions receiving a green flag when nothing has been achieved, or in some cases, is due to be achieved. For example, under:

9. Infrastructure for our Growing Community;

Action 9.1.2 Deliver works program for upgrades, road rehabilitation and re-seals as identified in the Transport Asset Management Plan.

This action receives 6 green flags.  One of the is for the Burrendong Way – upgrade to an urban standard, south from the Northern Distributor Road – completed – which is great news. However, the other 5 green flags are for:

I hate to be cynical, but it is not clear whether there will be effective reporting on the achievement of these ‘projects’ by the end of the year as councils are not now required to provide a Quarterly Review of the 4th Quarter. Orange City Council’s Annual Report is noticeably devoid of any measurement of performance against what Council originally promised to achieve in the budget and Operational Plan.

There are plenty of opportunities to include measurement and trends against baselines, but these are mostly avoided, and where figures are included, they are mostly inputs and activity rather than outputs or results.

It is also evident that milestones move between quarterly reports. For example, in the first Quarterly Report to 30th September we were told:

2.3.4 Performance Indicator - Develop Cricket Centre of Excellence at Wade Park

Performance Comment - This project is progressing. The tender has been awarded for the Construction of Wade Park Indoor Cricket Centre. There will be a meeting with the successful company to commence the delivery of the Centre of Excellence. Demolition of the old greyhound building is to commence in November 2019.

In the 2nd Quarterly Report we are told:

Performance Comment – The tender was awarded to Hines Construction. Demolition commenced in January 2020. Completion is due in October 2020.

It is good that we now have a date for completion that we can measure performance against, but this comment receives a green flag even though the milestone of the start of demolition was missed by 2 months.

I was interested to see the figures concerning Development Applications (DAs) as this has been a recurring theme and many of the business people who attend the Economic Development Community Committee have expressed concerns about the apparent slowness of processing DAs. This issue is reported:

2. Preserve – balancing the natural and built environment

7. Sustainable growth and respectful planning that values the natural environment

7.1 Engage with the community to develop plans for growth and development that value the local environment

Action: Provide efficient and effective development assessment and compliance in a timely manner.

There are performance targets in this area. The NSW Government sets targets and reports on the performance of councils. In this quarter processing times were within targets and received a green flag.

In last week’s column I wrote about Customer Satisfaction Surveys. The emphasis on processing times can mean that people take their eye off the ball about what Council is trying to achieve overall, in the quality of new development and economic and employment growth.

Another matter that was considered on the Council agenda was which Councillors would be on the CEO’s performance review panel guided by a consultant, presumably Blackadder and Associates who were engaged for the selection process. I have suggested previously that, making the performance criteria for the review of the CEOs performance public and using a 360 degree review, could increase the level of trust between Council and the community. It appears that Council is not going to make the performance criteria public or involve others in giving feedback on the Council’s performance.

It is to be hoped that the Panel will use performance criteria that are linked to achieving the outcomes in the Community Strategic Plan and are measurable without the constant moving of goalposts that seems to occur with the quarterly progress reporting.

I am happy to receive feedback from readers about this column and other issues you would like me to cover so please either contact me at Orange City Life or aes@amandaspaldingconsulting.com