Infrastructure Grant Funding Anomalies
Government grants are absolutely essential for Dungog Shire because they comprise up to 70% of total funding in our annual budgets, and without grants we could not provide some essential services and most importantly maintain our infrastructure. The new Clarence Town bridge is a classic example whereby state and federal governments provided the $23 million to build it – a wonderful result for our community. It will be a Council-owned bridge, while the heritage-listed old bridge remains a NSW Government structure. Once restored at a cost of about $20 million, it will provide an alternative one-way river crossing into town. Over the last 25 years, our roads infrastructure received numerous special grants enabling us to rehabilitate substantial sections of main and local roads, and replace 23 timber bridges throughout the Shire. Without these grants our main roads in particular would be in a horrible condition because they are no longer fully funded by the NSW Government. In 1995, half of NSW’s 36,000 KM network of main roads were reclassified as State Roads, retained by the government, and the rest became Regional Roads transferred to local Councils. Subsequently, the state provides a Block Grant for Regional Roads maintenance and contributes only 50% towards rehabilitation (the REPAIR Program). This arrangement has been very adverse to Dungog Shire because most of them were worn out back then, and as we had no new funding source for our newly imposed contributions, it took funding away from local roads. Over the last 30 years, this has diverted millions away from local roads and partly explains why many of them are in dire need of rehabilitation. The Block Grant formula is based on the population of each LGA rather than road function. When you cross the Shire boundaries, Maitland receives $36,000 per KM, Port Stephens gets $19,000 and we get $11,000 for maintenance of the very same road! Maitland LGA with over 95,000 people has 19KM of Regional Roads and Port Stephens with almost 80,000 people has 56KM compared with our 124 KM and 9,000 people. Also, they benefit from having many State Roads that are fully funded by the government while Dungog Shire is the only LGA in NSW that does not have a State Road. The REPAIR Program is dysfunctional because it only rehabilitates about 1KM annually, so it would take over 100 years to rebuild our main roads. But their design life is only 30 years due to high rainfall and reactive clay soils. Furthermore, inadequate maintenance funding means our newly rehabilitated main roads will wear out faster than they should. Meanwhile many of our local roads are over 50 years old and can only receive superficial repairs and pothole patching. Council has long been advocating for this perfect storm of disadvantage to be addressed and until that happens our main roads will remain in limbo and local roads will not receive the attention they deserve.
Your local B Ward Councillors: James Campbell 0484 599 709 james.campbell@dungog.nsw.gov.au Steve low 4996 4022 steve.low49@gmail.com
