Instagram · Carousel · 8 January 2026
💱🛂 The Execution Gap: a Safer City, or a SaverCity?
We all want the Safe City that our Lord Mayor and Council have championed. The vision set out in the Safe City Plan 2021-2025 was strong, ambitious, and fully funded.
But a vision without execution is just a hallucination.
📝 The Vision
Successive councils have tried to deliver on our priorities. They've listened to the community and wrote the cheque to fund our SafeCity Rangers. Just last month, the Lord Mayor announced his ambitious OneCity Together for Summer Safety Campaign.
In fact, in FY 2024/25, Council approved $156,500 specifically for new, high-visibility patrol utes.
The Goal: Rugged vehicles to help our Rangers deter antisocial behaviour.
⏳ The Bottleneck
So why don't we see them on the street?
Because the money isn't being spent.
The Result: No Utes ordered or delivered.
The entire budget was "carried forward" and doubled. (Now $0/$314.5k spent this FY as of December 2025 OCM minutes)
⁉️ The Excuse
Supply shortages are often blamed for our aging Community Safety fleet, even though our Parks Rangers and neighbouring councils didn't seem to have any issues.
While our latest Annual Report celebrates delivering 96% of our asset renewal program, somehow Utes for our SafeCity Rangers just didn't seem to make the cut.
🈳 The Reality
Because of this bottleneck, our frontline staff are forced to trade the promised Utes for Toyota hatchbacks; we've effectively traded in our SafeCity Rangers for Security Guards.
Just last week, I spotted Ranger vehicle 1GXZ-755 patrolling Wellington Square - a Ute likely in its 6th year of service. This vehicle is up to 50% over its useful life outlined by our City's policies.
🛃 The Verdict
We are delivering budget savings at the cost of Community Safety. While the City is popping champagnes celebrating budget surpluses, community complaints have skyrocketed - unsurprisingly most of them related to safety.
It is time for the bureaucracy to catch up with the Council's vision and the community's needs.
WAPOL delivered extra patrols, the Community actively "See it, Say it."
Can our City please commit to Buy it, Use it, and Fix it?
@cityofperth