Road inheritance costly, says CEO

By Paul Dunlop
CARDINIA Shire is still paying a hefty price for inheriting a road network dramatically worse than other municipalities on Melbourne’s fringe, council chief executive Don Welsh said last week.
Responding to concerns about the state of the local road network, Mr Welsh said the problems were largely a product of the shire’s “unique circumstances” set in place at the time of shire amalgamation.
Mr Welsh said Cardinia Shire faced a far greater challenge in maintaining and improving its road network than other councils in a similar situation.
Compared to the City of Casey, Shire of Melton and Shire of Whittlesea, Cardinia was bigger in size, more sparsely populated and had a larger proportion of roads that were either unsealed or had been poorly maintained for years, he said.
Speaking at council’s 18 July meeting, the chief executive officer produced figures (see panel) to support his argument.
The state of the road and drainage network, particularly in rural areas of the shire, has been a constant source of concern in the community and is often acknowledged by the council as its biggest bugbear.
Council has also attracted plenty of criticism for introducing a $100 municipal levy on top of rates last year and for willingly getting into what some residents perceive as an alarming level of debt.
Many residents argue the shire has its priorities wrong, but councillors and officers clearly believe otherwise.
Mr Welsh maintained both initiatives were part of a sound and forwardthinking plan to address the “unique” circumstances facing the shire without placing ratepayers under an impossible financial burden.
“We use debt to resource a program of sealing unsealed roads,” he said. “We do have a difficult task and we are doing it by not putting a burden on our ratepayers that is any greater than other councils in a similar situation.”
Mr Welsh said a demonstration of the difficulty of the task facing Cardinia Shire was that of the 1058 kilometres of unsealed roads within its borders, almost half experienced between 100 and 500 vehicle movements per day.
Roads such as Ryan Road in Pakenham had “no capacity” to deal with the traffic volumes it had, he said. “It is an enormous task that we face,” Mr Welsh said.
Responding to a question from Cr Helen Ward, Mr Welsh said the shire’s rates remained relatively low compared to other interface councils.
Although he said it was not possible to make general comparisons because each shire’s circumstances were different, the CEO was critical of councils that raised rates or introduced a municipal charge without real cause.
Mr Welsh said there were now only 27 of 79 municipalities across Victoria that did not have a municipal charge on top of their standard rating system.