Empower and
collaborate
Here you can find more about the fifth theme in our council plan: an empowered and collaborative Merri-bek.
This theme has:
10
major initiatives
6
ways to measure success
This part of our plan focuses on building community trust.
Our goal is to encourage everyone to get involved in council decision making.
We want to make good use of our resources. We also want to be accessible and responsive to our community.
Theme 5
What we will do
Better information
We will improve access to council information for everyone.
Having a real say
We will increase community participation in council decision making. We will involve the community in matters that directly impact on their lives.
Responding quickly
We will improve the way we respond to community requests and issues.
Advocating for you
We will advocate for our community.
Securing funding
We will secure more funding from developers to respond to population growth.
Good management
We will manage our money fairly, transparently and responsibly. This includes managing our assets to meet changing community needs.
Our goals
We will measure our success by looking at whether we:
We will measure our success by looking at whether we:
increase our results in the community satisfaction survey
decrease number of Council decisions made at meetings closed to the public
increase community satisfaction with our decisions
achieve a surplus
have 100% compliance with governance and management standards
Next you can read about some of the ways we will achieve our goals.
Next you can read about some of the ways we will achieve our goals.
Theme 5: case study 1
Improving customer service
Over the next 4 years, a key goal is to improve the customer service we provide to our community.
We also want to improve the experience people have when they contact us.
We will do this through clear customer service standards to guide the organisation. These are reflected in our Merri-bek Promise. Our culture change program, Community at the Heart, will also play a big role.
We expect to see improvements in how we manage customer requests. We are moving to a new phone system and, later, to a new customer management database. Through these changes we aim to provide a more responsive, seamless service.
We will build our capacity through:
- training to enhance key service skills
- re-engineering key service processes
- continuing improvements to our recently updated website.
We will also implement our Community Engagement and Accessible and Inclusive Communications policies.
Theme 5: case study 2
For our young people
We want children and young people to get involved in making decisions about our future.
People of all ages should be involved in the life of our community.
We need to make sure children and young people have a voice and feel able to contribute.
We are investing in our services for children and young people. We will develop a Child and Youth Engagement Framework to help make this happen.
Our Youth Ambassadors Program and Children’s Reference Group will help increase opportunities for children and young people to influence our decision making and lead their own projects.