Portarlington residents react to City of Greater Geelong’s $3.1m bill to seal roads

Portarlington residents could be forced to fork out a combined $3.1m to have their roads sealed through a council program, with individual homeowners slugged tens of thousands each.

Stafford Curran is upset with the costs residents have to pay to seal roads in Portarlington. Picture: Brad Fleet

Portarlington property owners across seven streets have been asked to contribute more than $3.1m to a $4.2m council-led road-sealing program in what one resident has described as “absolute garbage”.

Resident Stafford Curran has been sent a proposed bill of more than $34,000 for the City of Greater Geelong program, with one resident asked to pay $63,000.

Council’s acting executive director of city infrastructure, David Greaves, said initial estimates

indicated an average cost of about $10,000 per property, but admitted rising construction prices had caused significant increases.

Affected roads are Goodwill, Langdon, Traum, Willis, Harding, Park and Welfare streets.

Draft calculations seen by the Geelong Advertiser show three property owners would pay just under $4000; 23 would be charged close to $10,000; 25 residents would have to fork out up to $13,000, 75 would have to pay up to $20,000, 46 would pay up to 25,000 and 14 would pay close to $30,000.

A further nine residents would pay up to $40,000 and one resident would pay $63,000.

Mr Curran labelled the calculations “absolute garbage”.

“I can’t for the life of me understand how they can judge their costings on the value of the property,” he said.

Mr Curran said his family bought the large Willis St block in the 1940s, with his father later building the house he now lives in.

He said the block had been subdivided and was now a “larger than normal house block”.

“It’s just not feasible – to do up the street and to have to pay that amount is just ludicrous.”

Mr Curran said he would like to see costings for just sealing the road, without kerb and channelling costs.

He also said council needed to reveal its costings, including the cost of materials and labour, so residents knew what their payments would be going toward.

Mr Greaves said the special rate and charge schemes had been used for a long time and were considered when the project only provided value to a localised group of property owners.

“Using special rate and charge schemes is often the only way we can meet community requests for upgraded infrastructure within the region, within the budget we have available.,” he said.

“This project is still in the consultation phase and will only go ahead with the support of the property owners involved.

“We are inviting the property owners to participate in a survey to determine their level of support.”

Mr Greaves said the council would contribute 25 per cent towards the total cost of the proposed road upgrades for the project and property owners would be asked to share the remaining 75 per cent.

He said there were a number of ways costs were divided for special rate and charge schemes, including equal share, site value and frontage.

He said dividing costs based on land value was deemed the fairest method for this project.

“If the works go ahead, we will aim to achieve the fairest price for the highest-quality work through our tender process,” he said.

The proposals are currently going through a community consultation process, with council officers to then prepare a report and make a recommendations on the proposed project.

Originally published as Portarlington residents react to City of Greater Geelong’s $3.1m bill to seal roads