The Shire of Harvey are currently planning for the next eight years. As part of that process, we want to engage with as many people as we can to understand what’s important to the community.

Your Place means the Harvey Shire, and the specific community you live in.

Your Say means you get to have a say in the future of that place.

The Council Plan will be our roadmap for the next eight years: it lays out community priorities to help us plan, fund and deliver the services and facilities our localities want and need.

This document will replace our existing 10-year Community Strategic Plan. It helps us to make budget decisions around projects and services in our localities. 

The development of a Council Plan is a new requirement for Local Governments. It is intended to:

• Simplify planning and reporting
• Help local governments better focus their resources on service delivery and providing facilities
• Ensure council, administration and community have a shared understanding of the role of local government, and vision for the future.

The Community Scorecard provides us with benchmarking data to see how we are doing as a council, compared to other local governments. It also provides an opportunity for Shire of Harvey residents to let us know their priorities for their community.

This data helps us to:

• Understand where we are doing well
• Understand where we need to do better
• Understand community priorities, both as a whole and within each of our communities
• Inform our planning process

This part of the process is completed by independent consultant CATALYSE®, who will prepare a report showing the scorecard results. All scorecard responses are anonymous.

The Community Scorecard has fifteen questions.

The first set of questions are about demographics, such as which area you live in, your age, and your gender. These questions will not identify you as the survey is anonymous.

The next questions ask:

• How the Shire of Harvey is doing in different areas
• What it’s like to live in the Shire
• How strong your sense of belonging is in the community.

The scorecard then asks you to rate the Shire’s performance in four areas: Local Assets, Compliance, Discretionary Services and Advocacy.

Local Assets include things like:

• Local roads
• Trails
• Cycleways
• Public buildings
• Parks and playgrounds
• Streetscapes
• Street Lighting

Compliance means services that Local Government are required to provide, to ensure local laws, policies and regulations are followed. This includes:

• Planning
• Heritage
• Access and inclusion
• Ranger services
• Waste management
• Environmental health.

Discretionary Services are services the Shire delivers to meet local community needs. These services can be delivered only by the shire, or in partnership with other levels of government, or the private sector. These include:

• Services and facilities for youth, family and children, and seniors
• Sports services
• Reconciliation action
• Library services
• Arts and culture
• Events and tourism.

Advocacy is what we ask for. One of the Shire's roles is to advocate to state and federal government about services that we don't provide or have control over, such as:

• Police
• Hospitals
• Telecommunications
• Schools
• Hospitals
• Environment

The next two questions ask about your priorities for the Shire and your community for the next eight years. This section provides you with an opportunity for detailed input about projects, facilities and services you would like to see happening.

The final section asks about your connection with the Shire of Harvey, as a resident, landowner, business or community organisation.

Once the scorecard is complete and the report is released, we will hold a series of Your Place Your Say workshops in different locations around the Shire.

At these workshops, we will give an overview of the survey results. We will then ask participants to help us prioritise the projects, aspirations and priorities that have been developed through the survey and previous strategies so far, and add in anything that is missing.

This is a great opportunity to make further contributions to the process, and to continue engaging with the Shire in the development of the Council Plan.

Information and input gathered at the workshops will help us to further refine the plan and make it as relevant and useful to our communities as possible.

We encourage everyone aged from 14 up to complete the survey, attend the workshops, and speak up for what is important to you. 

The more people who participate, the more widely we can ensure the plan is representative of our community’s diversity, needs and aspirations.

The Shire of Harvey, as a local government, are responsible for things like:

• Local roads, bridges, and footpaths
• Drainage
• Waste collection and management
• Recreational facilities like parks, sports venues, swimming pools, town halls, public camping grounds and caravan parks
• Health services like water and food inspection, some immunisation services, toilet facilities, noise control, meat inspection and animal control
• Some community services
• Building services like inspections, licensing, certification and enforcement
• Planning and development approval
• Administration of facilities, like cemeteries, parking facilities and street parking
• Cultural facilities and services, like libraries and museums

This means that we can include considerations around all of the above when we talk about Your Place, Your Say.

Some things we are not responsible for include:

• State roads
• Power supply
• Schools and education
• Hospitals and health
• Railways and public transport
• Forestry
• Police
• Prisons and emergency services

These are state government responsibilities. We can advocate to state government in these areas, but we cannot provide these services.

Local Government revenue comes from three main sources:

• Rates
• Charges for the sale of goods and services
• Grants from Federal and State/Territory Governments.

All projects are dependent on obtaining funding or resourcing through one or more of these sources.