Hilltops Council is excited at a ‘surplus’, shouting from the rooftops a net operating ‘surplus’ of $1.6m before capital grants, for the latest financial year in results that have not been seen since 2018, according to the Deputy Mayor’s column published on September 19.
However, there are still deficits and residents can expect them to grow if and when Council staff commence work on restoring the road network to what it was before the wet weather events which have impacted the roads over the last 12 months.
With a state election coming in March next year, how much money will be forthcoming to fix country roads?
The ABC reported that there are 58 vacant jobs at Hilltops recently which is no doubt saving the organisation money, however, how much higher are the workloads on those who are working at the organisation?
According to the Councillor Column “The General Fund which covers everything from parks to roads, except water and sewerage also saw an improvement going from an $8.5m deficit in 2021 to a $1.8m deficit in 2022.”
The statement says, “Council accepts there is still work to do in the organisational structure, services, staffing levels and the Special Rate Variation.”
With those aspects in mind, there is certainly a lot of work to be done on the road network in Hilltops which is now out of control.
Potholes can no longer be referred to as just holes with whole patches of the road network breaking up as the thin bitumen surface covers the base which has softened in some parts and turned to slush in others.
The bitumen varies in thickness from 10 to 15 millimetres.
Once a pot hole has occurred it is often spreading and breaking up much larger parts of the road as shown just past the old ‘4 mile bridge’ on the way to Jugiong on the front page.
Vehicles are swerving to miss not only the deep and damaging pot holes all over the district but also the much larger areas which can affect all four tyres on a vehicle as it travels along the road.
By doing so these vehicles are trying to prevent damage to their vehicles and at the same time are trying to ensure that they don’t hit any oncoming traffic.
The damage is not just a Hilltops based problem as the Olympic highway in the CGRC area has been so severely impacted that the lowering of speed limits to 40 kilometres an hour and flashing lights have needed to be installed.
The Olympic Highway at least has some sort of excuse in that it had to carry a large amount of traffic while the temporary Wallendbeen Bridge was installed after failing.
The true cost of the damage to each Council’s road network is yet to be determined but it appears that little to no work is being done at Hilltops to fix the major issues other than sending out a grader to scrape the mess off the road.
Councillor Stadtmiller raised that a certain part of Jugiong Road could result in a fatality if it were not remedied and that the threat was imminent.
There has been no work done on the area of road mentioned by him at the August meeting in between Harden and Jugiong. The issue was raised in front of the General Manager, Mayor and the Directors. For the outdoor staff to commence and complete work they first must be given a directive from their superiors, many of whom who are based at desks in the Young Town Hall.
If residents are unhappy with aspects of the road network they should contact Council and report the issues by email and or by telephone. mail@hilltops.nsw.gov.au or 1300 445 586.
Councillor Stadtmiller wants to see action taken soon before there is a fatality on the roads due to the state of the roads and after raising it in August has told the Times he is not impressed with Council’s lack of response after having a month to inspect the site and undertake some work to stabilise the edge of the road which has been washed away and has left the white line sitting next to 10-15 millimetres of bitumen floating on thin air.
He said, “In my opinion it’s been raised, it’s on the record and nothing is being done.
Questions are asked and they are often taken on notice with an explanation not forthcoming at the next meeting.
It simply isn’t good enough when elected members of Council raise serious issues in local government and feel ignored or are told that the question will be taken on notice.
The community needs to watch some of these live streams to see how often it is happening.
It never happened anywhere near as much under the old Council boundaries, staff knew their patch.”
