Ballarat City Council would welcome any extra funding to help cover the cost of its huge road maintenance program.
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Council infrastructure and environment director Terry Demeo said the federal government should revisit what it gives to regional municipalities.
Ballarat received about $12 million in financial assistant grants from the government for infrastructure maintenance.
It was just a small portion of council’s total $176 million budget, but Mr Demeo said it was right to question if a more equitable allocation could be made.
“There is some question, from an obviously biased position of a regional or rural council, as to why financial assistant grant money, even a portion of it, now flows back into Melbourne,” he said.
“Without being too political Ballarat would certainly welcome any additional funding to support our road maintenance.
“We would question the need for some of our significant, highly developed, highly populated inner Melbourne municipalities – why they would attract that funding given it was supposed to be intended for road funding predominately?”
Regional and rural councils have overhauled their road maintenance priorities following the state government’s decision to cap rates.
Ballarat City has taken a more practical approach to ensure roads were fixed in an efficient and cost effective process.
Mr Demeo said council had developed a coordinated and more proactive roadworks program.
“From an operational perspective it is our intent to continue to get more efficient in that maintenance delivery,” he said.
“We put a lot of energy into our asset management area.
“We have a team of inspectors who undertake inspections of our key roads, including things like night inspections.”
The Know Your Council website showed Ballarat ratepayers rated the municipality’s roads 58/100 on average in 2015-16.
However this was higher than the rating given by residents in the surrounding local government areas.
Pyrenees Shire Council was approved for a special rate rise of 1.5 per cent above the cap, each year, for two years.
It will add $115,000 to its budget, but can only be used on roads.
A similar request for Ballarat City Council to increase its rates above the cap was knocked back.