Council endorsed its Unsealed Roads Management Framework at the 10 September 2024 meeting.
The framework will guide Council’s actions on how to best manage the 708km of unsealed roads across the municipality.
Yarra Ranges Mayor, Cr Sophie Todorov, said concern around unsealed roads is a key issue for our community and something that is challenging to manage.
“The loss of $100 million from the federal government funding program, Roads for Community Initiative, has led Council to think carefully about how to effectively and efficiently manage our unsealed roads with a limited budget.
“This framework is a result of that work, and it essentially lays out the prioritisation process, how we monitor our unsealed roads and the scheduled maintenance program.
“By following the framework it will also allow us to more easily identify roads or issues that we can advocate for to other levels of government.”
The framework pulls together individual documents the community has already been consulted on, including the Asset Plan, Council Plan, Council Budget and Road Management Plan.
Historically, Council has upgraded unsealed roads through initiatives such as Private Street Schemes or Special Charge Schemes where residents who were to benefit by the upgrade would help share the cost of the project with Council.
In more recent years however, Special Charge Schemes have been more difficult to establish due to the financial pressures facing many in the community.
Unless further advocacy efforts are successful, Council will need to continue providing service to the community through its unsealed road assets for the foreseeable future.
“We know that most ratepayers understandably prefer sealed roads, however the cost of construction and obtaining funding means that we can’t seal as many as we’d like,” Cr Todorov said.
