Wellington keeps driving for roads spending

SURF Coast Shire councillor Heather Wellington is continuing to push for a reshaping of local government priorities.

Cr Wellington was the keynote speaker at the Building Better Roads Forum, held by the Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF) on Thursday.

The Winchelsea Ward councillor has argued for some time for a rethink on what areas the shire is investing in, suggesting that the council has limited resources but its core responsibilities such as roads and road maintenance are missing out.

Her speech at the forum at the Mount Moriac Hotel was along similar lines, noting that she was “bombarded by complaints about roads” from her constituents.

She said complaints and community satisfaction surveys showed a significant gap between performance and community expectations – this is especially apparent in Winchelsea, where residents rate the council’s performance on sealed local roads 23 points lower than those in Torquay.

On unsealed local roads, the community rates their importance at 72, but the council’s performance is only rated at 50.

Cr Wellington said the $340,000 asset renewal backlog for roads (less than a quarter of the total) was not representative of the issue.

“It’s not a massive backlog, and some in our council would say ‘there isn’t a problem; the problem is perception, not reality’ and I say to them ‘come out and talk to these folk and do an analysis of it so we can actually have a good conversation about whether there is a problem or not’.”

Cr Wellington’s views about local government spending are supported by the VFF, with president David Jochinke saying that roads and rates had always been a focus for the federation.

“One of the big issues that we do have is that local government in many areas is unsustainable in the future.

“We’ve seen from the Whelan Report that 18 regional councils are unsustainable. Of that, the estimate is that seven will be bankrupt within five years.”

He said the local government had about 80 responsibilities under state law.

“Our concern is they should do those 80, before they do anything else.”