By Lachlan Ellis<\/p>\n
Moorabool Council has voted to increase its spending on road maintenance this month, as road conditions continue to worsen from rain damage.<\/p>\n
A motion to increase the spending in the budget was moved by Cr Paul Tatchell during Urgent Business at the 2 November Ordinary Meeting of Council (OMC),<\/p>\n
\u201cI move the motion that Council delegates the Chief Executive Officer to increase the road maintenance budget of up to $600,000, to address deterioration of the road network. Part two would be, request development of a communication plan to inform the community of rectification works,\u201d Cr Tatchell said.<\/p>\n
Noting that \u201cwe can\u2019t fix every road overnight\u201d, Cr David Edwards asked Council officers what additional defects could be attributed to recent rain damage, and what the timeframe looked like on repairing Council\u2019s roads.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t quantify it at the moment, not only do we have the additional maintenance through normal potholes, but we\u2019ve got the damage from storms. They\u2019re sort of intertwined\u2026it\u2019d be more than double,\u201d Phil Jeffrey (General Manager of Infrastructure) said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur plan is to try and hit it as hard as we can as early as we can. We obviously need a bit of a break in the weather to get things moving on the ground, but we\u2019re organising contractors to get mobilised well before Christmas. We want to have a lot of the storm damage rectified prior to Christmas, and then the sealed roads will probably take a bit longer than that to get organised.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Jeffrey said they are hoping \u201cearly in the new year we\u2019d be back on track, subject to weather being kind to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The motion to increase road maintenance spending was approved unanimously by Council.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Lachlan Ellis Moorabool Council has voted to increase its spending on road maintenance this month, as road conditions continue to worsen from rain damage. A motion to increase the spending in the budget was moved by Cr Paul Tatchell during Urgent Business at the 2 November Ordinary Meeting of Council (OMC), \u201cI move the […]<\/p>\n