Evolve

Thanks for your question Frehnejc, and apologies for the oversight. We have now uploaded the progress report for workshop four, however the fifth workshop had to be cancelled and has not occured yet. We will upload the progress report for this workshop once it happens. 

Evolve Project Team

Thank you for your question Frehnejc.

The dashboards are a snapshot of the business units within the Town. The purpose of the dashboards is to provide a list of services, both legislative and discretionary, and the level of which the town is providing. Financial information has also been included to show how much it costs to provide the current level of service. Sporting clubs do contribute to healthy lifestyles however, sporting clubs that use our facilities offer a private service to the public and this is why they have not been included on the dashboards.

As previously suggested, if you are seeking further clarification on the level of service dashboards we would be happy to assist. You can contact Hayley from the Evolve team on 9311 8111.

Evolve Project Team

Thank you for your question Frehnejc.

The dashboards that have been produced for Evolve show the financial and level of service information for our business units. The financial information includes the budgeted operating expense, revenue, capital expense, employment expense and non-operating revenue for the 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 financial years. The 'we cost you' area is a snapshot of the operating expense only, as indicated on the dashboard document. We did consider using the net profit for the 'we cost you' area, however this would not be an accurate figure as the dollar value would only be based on the 2014-2015 annual report and not the current financial year. The source of the financial information provided on the dashboard is the Annual Budget 2015-2016. This document can be viewed, along with the Annual Report, on the Town of Victoria Park website.

If you would like any further information or clarification please contact the Town of Victoria Park on 08 9311 8111 and ask for Hayley.

Kind regards

Evolve Project Team.

Thanks for your questions.

Yes there will be participation opportunities other than weekday evenings. We have set up a couple of café conversation groups that are meeting during the day on a week day. If you’re interested in attending one of these, let us know by emailing evolve@vicpark.wa.gov.au.

We are also planning an option for people to participate on a weekend day. At the moment we’re not offering crèche or other activities at our workshops, although there may be an opportunity to run a workshop or two out of one of our facilities that does offer a crèche service. Great idea. We’ll look into providing that option. A “listening booth” is also a good idea and we will look into implementing this option.

We’re trying to engage children by running versions of our workshops at schools. So far we have run a visioning workshop at Kent Street Senior High School. We’d like to run more of these at some of the other schools in the Town and will be working towards doing so during the public participation phase.

Evolve Project Team

The dashboard in a very similar form has been used extensively by the Eastern States as a valid and simple method of showing the current status of a Business Area. It has a pedigree and a history of being an efficient manner of relaying complex information to the general community. The area of contention (that the dashboard didn’t include areas such as profit and loss) was not needed in making recommendations regarding the service expectations of that Business Area. Just to clarify, the dashboard was never meant to be utilised for accountancy purposes so as it stands is fit for purpose. We need to ensure that the information is readily understandable by the majority of community members and providing statistics to the detail of the annual budget and beyond would alienate a proportion of the community. We are happy to supply this information as a separate sheet to all participants but we feel it will be of benefit only to a minority of participants. As you'll recall, the dashboard was accepted by the majority of attendees at the AGORA 1 workshop that you have mentioned.

Hi Ian

Thanks for your question. We don't subscribe to the view that the workshops that the first Agora 1 group have completed to date are fatally flawed because they have not got any Business Unit Level of Service dashboards. This is because the dashboards have not been needed to complete any of the required activities to date.

The dashboards have not been supplied because they have not been required and also because we have been fine tuning them so they they're as error free as possible. 

Hi Fred

Thanks for your questions. The Business Unit Level of Service information will be available shortly. We're finalising the last one at the moment so there isn't long to go now before you'll be examining them in depth. As I'm sure you'll appreciate though, and in the spirit of getting things right, we want to make sure that they're as accurate as possible. Taking the time to get them as right as possible has meant that a couple of last minute surprises have been addressed and we're confident that they're accurate and error free. The fine tuning and a couple of surprises along the way have meant they have taken a little longer than expected to finalise. The good news is up until now they have not been needed as we've been focusing on visioning. 

The agenda item that you refer to from the September 2015 round of meetings is item 10.2 - Integrated Planning and Reporting Framework Major Review Process (Evolve 2017).

Evolve Project Team

Hi pommiecruiser

Thank you for your suggestion. We will take a look at the example and see what we can do with it. 

Evolve Project Team

Hi Mick

Apologies for the delay in replying to your questions.

The answers to your questions are provided below:

1.  So far households in the Town will have been notified about Evolve through the Town’s Life in the Park publication and through information about Evolve that has been published in the Southern Gazette. We have recognised that there is an opportunity to keep doing more to inform people about Evolve.The Town has been working with Australia Post to finalise a postcard that will be sent to all ratepayers (regardless of where they live), residents and businesses. It’s taken a while to finalise but we expect the postcard to be delivered next week. As we continue with the public participation process for Evolve we’ll keep looking for different ways to notify people about the project.

2.  People and/or groups who do not have access to the internet will be provided information about Evolve through the postcard mentioned above, the Life in the Park publication and articles in the Southern Gazette. Also where we identify a need, for example traders are a group of people who are often too busy to participate in a workshop, we will attempt to meet in small groups or have one on one chats. Another way we will look to engage people in the project will be through spontaneous opportunities such as at events, on the street and in shopping centres. If a member of the community would like to visit one of our facilities or our Administration Building we would be happy to sit down and chat with them about the project.

3.  Where possible participants who attend workshops will be given notice about the discussion items for upcoming workshops. Having said that, in some instances participants will be empowered to dictate what will be discussed at a workshop. In these cases, participants will not receive information.

4.  The Strategic Community Plan has to identify land use expectations for the Town. With this in mind, the Town Centre may come up as part of a broad discussion to identify the community’s expectations around land use in the Town for the next 15 years and beyond. In this context, participants will be provided with an explanation of how the Western Australian town planning system operates and all relevant State Planning documents that pertain to the Town. Notwithstanding this, it could arise through the next five months that people want to specifically consider the Town Centre as part of the public participation process for Evolve. If this happens, we will set up dedicated workshops and/or café conversations and/or digital engagement activities on Your Thoughts related to the Town Centre. In terms of context and background, in the first instance, participants would be given information related to land tenure and town planning zoning and development controls.

We hope the above information clarifies things for you. 

Hi thislo

Thanks for taking the time for letting us know your thoughts about Evolve.

We take your point about the timing for beginning to inform people about Evolve and it is something that we would do differently in hindsight. If you would like to know more about the circumstances as to why this phase of the project fell within the festive season we would be happy to talk about it.

We are following up on our previous communications by sending a ‘circular’ in the form of a postcard to all addresses across the Town. This will stress the importance of the project and that it is critical to the drafting and implementation of the Town’s strategic documents. The circular will also give people details for signing up to the project.

The questions for the ‘Ask the People’ survey are important in helping us to plan an inclusive public participation process. We are currently reviewing the questions so we really value your input at this time. In order to respond flexibly to the public priorities, we need to find out people’s participation and communication preferences, and that is what Ask the People is about.

The stakeholder groups that have been contacted during the initial stages of Ask the People include sports groups, religious groups, community groups, aboriginal groups, businesses, collectives, resident groups, youth groups and groups that have shown an interest in community engagement. The initial contact list was never intended to target every person across the Town (that is the role of the media and communications plan). In fact Ask the People could now be called Ask Evolve as we are receiving a very large number of inquiries as a result of the Evolve website (and Ask the People questionnaire).

So far we’ve had 87 people complete the Ask the People survey.

As of last week we had 107 people who have confirmed their participation in Evolve. We have also emailed over 400 people who indicated an interest in participating in the project when they completed the Community and Business Satisfaction Surveys. (The Community survey was randomly sent out to 5000 people and all businesses were sent a survey).

Our Evolve Public Participation Coordinator, Izzy Abuleela (also Digital Hub Manager) will be in touch about our public participation options.

Thanks again.