After nearly five years of banging on about the shocking state of our local roads, I was very pleased at Councils meeting of 30/3 to be able to negotiate additional funding to FINALLY SEAL Old Stock Route Road and Brennans Dam Road at Vineyard.
Most of this is new money, and was absolutely not on the table before.
Some additional commentary:
• Unfortunately this does not yet seal the Commercial Road approach.
• The culvert will have some drainage and scour works done, but will remain a single-lane crossing for now.
• I couldn’t get the whole package of works through tonight, both because of our inability to complete the whole project within the deadline of the Commonwealth grant (31 Dec 2021), but also because I could not get more than this through the Chamber (for now).
• Further stages to fix Commercial + widen the culvert have been costed (~$450K) and I pledge to return to these ASAP.
• Yes, this road floods. Regularly. However, when natural disasters strike we get 100% coverage from the State Government to restore these roads but only on the basis of a ‘no betterment clause’, meaning we can’t use disaster relief funds to improve a road beyond it’s previous state. If however we improve it now, future damage will be covered to this new better standard. Some of the drainage works will help prevent road erosion against future flooding.
THANK YOU to my Hawkesbury Liberal Team Council colleagues and other Councillors who voted for this, especially those who reversed their previous opposition. Not everyone did…