West Australians have spoken \u2014 and they want better parks, smoother footpaths and less graffiti in their suburbs.<\/p>\n
New data from community reporting app Snap Send Solve has revealed what\u2019s most important to WA residents when it comes to local government.<\/p>\n
The first-of-its-kind satisfaction survey, drawn from tens of thousands of app users, shows though WA councils top the country for performance, residents still have plenty of concerns \u2014 from bin collection and traffic congestion to untidy public spaces and crumbling footpaths.<\/p>\n
Parks and gardens topped the wishlist for improvements, followed closely by cycling and walking infrastructure, parking headaches, and graffiti clean-ups.<\/p>\n
More than 75,000 Australians took part in the survey, with Snap Send Solve gathering data based on reports sent to 125 of WA\u2019s 137 local councils over the past year.<\/p>\n
In WA alone, the most common issues flagged were rubbish and bins, parking problems, abandoned shopping trolleys, park and council facility concerns, and tree maintenance.<\/p>\n
Despite the volume of complaints, WA came out on top nationally, with councils here receiving an average satisfaction rating of 62.7 per cent \u2014 just above the national average of 61.2 per cent.<\/p>\n
The standout performer? The City of Mandurah, which took the top spot nationwide. Cockburn, Gosnells, Stirling and Joondalup also ranked in the top 10, meaning WA made up half of the country\u2019s best-rated councils.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have relationships with lots of councils in WA and I think they\u2019re absolutely providing a great service to the community,\u201d Snap Send Solve founder Danny Gorog said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the councils are smaller by population and that means it\u2019s a bit more personal. I guess I\u2019m not surprised.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I compare driving around the suburbs of Perth to the suburbs in Sydney or Melbourne, you can tell that it\u2019s neater.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Gorog, who launched the app 15 years ago after a frustrating trip to the local park with his son, said the idea came from a simple question.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the time I had a young son and I took him to a local playground around the corner from where I lived,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe loved going on the swing. I got to the park and the chain on the swing was broken and he just started to cry and have a tantrum.<\/p>\n
\u201cI looked around and I was like, how do I get this fixed? And so that was the genesis of the idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since then, the app has handled hundreds of thousands of reports \u2014 and in WA, nine in 10 reports were marked as solved last year.<\/p>\n
The results suggest local governments are listening \u2014 but the message from the community is clear: clean up the streets, maintain the parks, and make it safer and easier to walk and cycle around town.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"West Australians have spoken \u2014 and they want better parks, smoother footpaths and less graffiti in their suburbs.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,135,44,84,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-74705","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-local-government","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-politics","13":"tag-wa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}