SHOALHAVEN City Council is “blundering from one disaster to another”, according to its most experienced member, Cr Greg Watson.
Amid growing unrest about roadworks failing soon after construction, and new sporting fields being substandard and threatening the region’s push into sporting tourism, Cr Watson has likened council to “a chook with its head cut off”.
“There is failure after failure in what are traditional council works, affecting just about every public works project council has taken on in recent years,” Cr Watson said.
“There are major systems problems within the organisation.
“Council’s structure needs a thorough shake-up,” Cr Watson said.
He is not alone in his condemnation, with fellow councillor and Kiama MP Gareth Ward saying something was “clearly wrong” with the way council was carrying out its duties, particularly in building roads.
“Roads should not be breaking up just weeks after being constructed,” Cr Ward said.
“We have seen a steady decline in the standard of road construction in recent years.”
Cr Ward is putting forward a notice of motion to the next council meeting on February 28 calling for an independent report on whether council was getting value for money in its road construction projects.
The investigation needed to be carried out by an independent civil engineer, Cr Ward said, to get to the bottom of whether projects were failing because of specifications or designs being prepared by council staff, or whether council needed to spend more money to get projects done right.
“It’s better to get it right in the first place than to continually patch and repair,” Cr Ward said.
“Getting roads right is about an investment in the future.”
In contrast council was wasting money, according to Cr Watson, by building sporting fields on unsuitable areas without completing all the work needed to ensure a quality result.
New sporting fields being built at South Nowra, where only a small amount of organic material was being spread over impervious clay, were a case in point, according to Cr Watson.
Council staff had ignored a consultant’s report on preparing the fields, and Cr Watson questioned why consultants had to be brought in on a project that should have been standard for council staff.
“Traditionally, all this expertise would have been expected to reside within council,” he said.
Cr Watson said sub-standard sporting fields were at odds with the Shoalhaven’s push to attract sporting events to the region.
“We seem to have lost the capacity to get things done correctly, in a way that meets community needs and expectations,” he said.
Cr Watson blamed the situation on council’s management structure, with the people carrying out the work being given designs that were unsuitable.
That resulted in repeated problems on roads including Bolong Road, Coolangatta Road, the intersection of Pyree Lane and Greenwell Point Road, Jindy Andy Lane and the entrances to Huskisson and Culburra Beach.
It also caused the problem last year when HMAS Albatross was isolated by bridge works on Albatross Road taking place at the same time as BTU Road was torn up “causing enormous disruption to traffic going to HMAS Albatross”, Cr Watson said.
Email a friend