Council should seal the road deal

PROPERTY owners along a dusty 2.6kilometre stretch of Manks Road, Tooradin, have launched a lastditch effort to have their road sealed.
Two representatives Alan Rowe and Greg Dunkley put a strong case to the City of Casey general purposes committee meeting on Tuesday, 11 April, calling for the strip to be sealed.
The problem is they want the road sealed without having to contribute to the cost, and the council says they must pay.
About 15 kilometres of Manks Road, except for 2.6 kilometres in the City of Casey from the Kooweerup Pakenham Road to Five Ways, has been sealed, partly by the Shire of Cardinia and partly by the former Shire of Cranbourne.
The Cardinia section from the Kooweerup Road to the CardiniaCasey border was sealed at no cost to residents along the road.
This was a cost to the Shire of Cardinia and, of course, its residents through a loan program.
That seems fair enough because most residents or at least someone in their families are bound to use Manks Road at some time.
Can you imagine how the few residents on this short section of dusty, potholed road feel when Casey asks them to contribute $10,000 each to this last dusty strip?
Casey says they must pay because they would derive a benefit from the sealed road.
If they were the only people using the road, as is the case in private residential streets, it would hardly need to be sealed. But they are not the only people using the road.
Heavy transports and a steady stream of other vehicles use the road, which clearly is a connector road, a through road, arterial or main road – whatever you want to call it.
The road links two important areas – Kooweerup and Five Ways.
Manks Road cannot be compared with what is often deemed to be a local road or a private street.
Historically it has been an arterial road, but VicRoads changed this classification to make it a council road.
This was done despite its increased use and importance as a link road to leave the councils with the unwanted responsibility of sealing the road.
VicRoads, to put it generously, dudded the councils.
However, that is no reason for the City of Casey to dud its ratepayers in turn.
Some councillors will argue that people in residential subdivision areas pay for their streets to be made because the cost is included in the purchase price of their blocks.
They say then so should people already living in areas such as Manks Road pay, and, I might add, the council wants people living along Cardinia Road from the Cardinia Casey border to the South Gippsland Highway near Harewood to pay.
There is a vast difference between these roads and private streets because thousands of vehicles from outside the district do not use the private residential streets.
Also property owners along Manks Road lost their underlying value with the stroke of a bureaucratic pen that put them in a green wedge zone.
They cannot raise the money to pay for the roads by subdividing their land.
They are trapped.
Mr Dunkley told the committee he was assured prior to buying his property that Manks Road was a Government responsibility and he would not have to pay for its upkeep or upgrading.
Mr Rowe also told the council the then Country Roads Board guaranteed him Manks Road would be sealed at no cost to abutting owners.
He said the council was paying more than $30,000 a year for grading and maintenance on the unmade strip, yet refused to pay the last nine per cent of the cost to seal the road.
Property owners say the maintenance cost has already amounted to more than what the council is asking them to pay and will continue adding.
My view is that the council could save on a costly maintenance problem and win a few brownie points simply by sealing the road.