Putting the future of road service levels in the hands of the community could be the key to managing expectations and tapping into local knowledge.

Simonne Johnston, Manager of Local Government Strategy at the UTS Institute for Public Policy, will present a case study of a recent citizens panel on road service levels within a rural NSW community at IPWEA Sustainability in Public Works Conference later this month.

Johnston says the process combines an evidenced-based approach that recognises the technical expertise of staff with the community’s knowledge of their area and their expectations of service delivery.

“The process of a citizens panel aims to bring together community members with different perspectives and values on a public problem, provide them with all the evidence elected representatives have available in making decisions, and then ask community members to provide non-binding recommendations to government on how to proceed with the problem,” Johnston explains.

“In this way, deliberation empowers community members by simulating government decision-making conditions and, in doing so, provides elected representatives with a greater level of confidence in the decisions they make.” 

What are the benefits?

Johnston says there are a multitude of benefits that make a citizens panel worth considering, such as:

Engaging communities in an active and deliberative way, where conventional formal methods such as public meetings and exhibitions have not attracted a large or particularly representative response.

• Fostering reflection, consensus and a respectful dialogue based on careful deliberation.
• The opportunity to incorporate a larger or more representative portion of the community, who may be outside of the professional, activist spheres or personality types that may be less likely to participate in current systems of governance and local government advocacy.
• Fostering knowledge of the council and its democratic processes by word of mouth.
• Assembling a forum that is enhanced by the narrow-scoped but significant nature of the issue at hand.

The case study Johnstone will discuss features a rural council in the mid-north of NSW with 2064 km in roads (634km sealed and 1430 unsealed) with a replacement value of $361 million.

“The cost to provide the road network – operations, maintenance renewal and upgrading – was projected at $8.5 million per year and there was concern around the long-term financial pressures facing the council to sustain this level of investment as well as meet community expectations of increasing the length of sealed roads,” Johnstone says.

“The council decided to get the community involved in the decision-making process around setting road service levels for the council moving forward.

“This approach put decision making about future road service levels in the hands of the community through a robust engagement process.”  

What are the challenges?

Of course, Johnston said there are also a number of challenging factors to consider:

• They requires commitment from councillors and staff to undertake process in terms of resources.
• They require commitment from councillors and staff to trust the process and be willing to be informed by community recommendations.
• They require a lot of information gathering from staff, such as detailed description of assets and costings and budgets.
• You need to have an understanding of the whole-of-council budget and service levels so if there are recommendations to decrease other services to increase this service there is the ability to have an informed conversation about the implications of this.

Ultimately, Johnston says the greatest determination of success is whether the community has all the relevant information so they can make informed decisions, along with ensuring the panel is representative of the community’s demographics and perspectives.

“This involves taking them on a tour of all the classes and standards of roads so they can understand the issues, understanding the wider community’s views on the issue, providing them with all relevant data and then testing the recommendations with the wider community so there is a level of  trust in the process and decisions and that they are representative of the broader community,” she says.

Don’t miss Simonne Johnston’s presentation 'Putting Decision Making on Asset Management in the Hands of the Community' at IPWEA’s Sustainability in Public Works Conference, 14-15 May, Sydney. Register now.