The raw data supports our interactive visualisation tool dashboard which summarises the financial statement data for Victoria’s 79 councils for the 2016-17 and 2017-18 financial years.
We grouped councils into five cohorts based on size, demographics and funding:
• metropolitan—predominately urban in character and located within Melbourne’s densely populated urban core
• interface—one of the nine municipalities that form a ring around metropolitan Melbourne
• regional city—urban and partly rural in character
• large shire—a municipality with more than 16 000 inhabitants that is predominantly rural in character
• small shire—a municipality with less than 16 000 inhabitants that is predominantly rural in character.
The cohorts are consistent with Local Government Victoria’s classification of council types.