The Minister for Planning and Local Government, Vickie Chapman has announced that ratepayers, residents and the broader South Australian community are to have access to information about their local Council’s performance through a new website.
Ms Chapman said Councils in Focus, now on the Attorney-General’s Department website, would help people to understand better what their Council was spending money on, where the revenue came from and how it benefitted their community.
“Councils spend billions of dollars each year on a variety of services, including roads, transport, environment, recreation, economic development and libraries,” Ms Chapman said.
“This way, information on where the money comes from and where it goes will be available to the public for the first time through one simple, easy-to-access portal.” she said.
She said the resource would ensure a greater level of transparency and accountability in local Government.
The Minister said information available to the public would include: Details on rates individual Councils charged including grants they received and other sources of funding; where Councils spent money and how much; and each Council’s financial position and performance.
She said ratepayers would be able to see how their Council had changed over a five-year period, compare their Council to similar Councils and compare their Council to the State average.
Ms Chapman said the information could also be compared by a range of different measures such as population, number of ratepayers, or kilometres of roads, so that comparisons were meaningful across Councils despite their size or nature.
She said individual Councils could also make comments about the information that related to them, to include more context about the data and all the data would be pulled in from existing sources so it was not diverting Council resources.
The Attorney-General’s Councils in Focus website can be accessed at this PS News link.
