Because council endorsed its draft road management plan last week and it is now open for community comment.
Mayor Adrian Weston said the plan detailed the inspection program for council’s extensive road network, intervention levels and response times.
‘‘Council maintains a network of 1150km of sealed roads, 2100km of gravel roads, and 800km of earth roads,’’ Cr Weston said.
‘‘We also look after a range of road-related assets including footpaths, shared paths, bridges and culverts, signs, roadside vegetation and drainage pit lids.
‘‘The road management plan provides specific details of how council will manage these assets to identified standards, to ensure they remain fit for purpose for road users.’’
The plan was first adopted by council in 2004 and has been regularly reviewed since that time. In this review, several improvements have been made including simplifying the document to make it clearer and easier to read, particularly relating to road hierarchies and response times; rewording defect response descriptions; some changes to intervention levels; updating the register of public roads.
The register includes a listing of roads council is responsible for.
‘‘Since the plan was last updated a number of new subdivisions have opened up and additional roads have been included, along with changes to the road network from the rural road review,’’ Cr Weston said.
The draft plan is available on council’s website and customer service centres.
Submissions close June 3.
■CAMPASPE Shire Council has also made its policy responsible for assessing and managing requests from the community to upgrade roads, easier to understand.
Council revised it recently after speaking with the community who made it clear the policy could not be properly understood.
The update addresses the areas of confusion, to help in understanding, and assist in the ease of use in applying the policy, both for council staff and applicants.
Changes include renaming the policy, simplifying the trigger for shared costs of any works, providing more detail around the basis of payment, details around the standards of construction, the policy’s relationship with the Local Government Act, and a stand down period of one year to allow reasonable time before revisiting an issue.
The policy is available on council’s website.