Overall, residents are happy with the services the council provides, but not with the abilities of its elected members.
During March and April the council engaged market research firm BigEars to carry out a resident survey to assess the public’s feelings about the council’s performance - 843 responses were received.
The results were presented to elected members on Tuesday during the council’s performance, policy and partnerships committee meeting.
Respondents were asked to rate their satisfaction with a range of council functions.
Council strategy and policy manager Rhiannon Sutter said satisfaction was highest with parks and open spaces in Invercargill, which 80% of respondents were satisfied with, followed by library services and collections (67%).
Just over half of respondents were satisfied with the Splash Palace facility and about one-third were satisfied with the council’s events and venue services, she said.
Ms Sutter also stated the community’s perception of democratic processes indicated a general lack of satisfaction, only 7% agreeing the council was a high-performing council.
Relatively few respondents agreed it was able to perform as a governing body (12%), or that council members had the capability and knowledge required to complete their tasks (7%).
She believed the lower scores were a national trend.
"We have been having conversations with other councils around their processes and it does appears to be a national trend at the moment — perhaps linked to Covid, perhaps linked to other elements ... lower satisfaction levels with the democratic process itself."
She also highlighted a change in methodology on the survey due to the decreasing popularity of telephone landlines.
The survey was carried out primarily online, where those who felt they had something to say were more likely to respond.
"This tends to present as more negative respondents than positive," she said.
The council recently concluded 18 months of work to address governance concerns raised by the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) following media coverage regarding significant conflict among elected representatives and the delivery of several high-profile capital which were "testing the capacity of the council to provide strong, unified governance and leadership".
The DIA stated in a letter to the council that it was satisfied the organisation had sufficiently addressed its governance issues, but highlighted the public confidence was still pretty low.
