{"id":319529,"date":"2022-06-09T22:10:31","date_gmt":"2022-06-09T12:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/?p=319529"},"modified":"2022-06-10T21:01:49","modified_gmt":"2022-06-10T11:01:49","slug":"council-delays-birt-road-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2022\/06\/09\/council-delays-birt-road-decision\/","title":{"rendered":"Council Delays Birt Road Decision"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Deputy Mayor Gavin Jones, Cr Kathy Duff, Cr Kirstie Schumacher, Cr Jane Eekens, Mayor Brett Otto, Cr Danita Potter, SBRC Acting Infrastructure General Manager Ged Brennan and Cr Scott Henschen prepare to board a bus on their inspection tour of the region’s worst roads (Photo: Kathy Duff)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

June 9, 2022 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Birt Road residents in Kingaroy are unlikely to get part of their street sealed in the coming year, despite arranging several on-site meetings with South Burnett councillors and lodging a petition with the SBRC.<\/p>\n

The backflip comes after Councillors initially supported the residents’ request by a margin of four votes to two.<\/p>\n

Instead, Councillors now appear likely to use the remaining $2.2 million of Council’s $3.3 million Local Roads and Community Infrastructure (LRCI) grant to patch other roads.<\/p>\n

The Birt Road issue has been raised at four Council meetings over the past two months.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In April, Councillors were told drainage problems on Birt Road were so severe one family now has to sandbag their front door whenever it rains to prevent run-off from the road flooding their home.<\/p>\n

They also heard dust from the road was polluting residential water tanks and causing chronic health problems that have put at least one resident in hospital several times since she moved to the area from the Sunshine Coast.<\/p>\n

Residents said Birt Road now hosted a wedding centre, a B&B, a tourism business, an accountant, a mechanic, a builder, and a duboisia plantation, along with many new homes.<\/p>\n

This had increased the road’s traffic substantially and made an already bad situation much worse.<\/p>\n

Councillors were initially sympathetic to the residents’ request and voted to allocate $950,000 of their remaining LRCI funding to sealing a 1.4km stretch of Birt Road by a margin of 5 to 2.<\/strong><\/p>\n

At May’s Infrastructure Standing Committee meeting a few weeks later, they voted by a margin of 4 to 2 to expand this to $1.25 million to cover an expected rise in bitumen costs.<\/p>\n

But at the Council’s May General Meeting, matters took a sudden change of direction.<\/p>\n

At this meeting, Councillors were expected to confirm their earlier standing committee decision to increase funding for the Birt Road project.<\/p>\n

Instead, Cr Kathy Duff – who opposed the project from the outset because she wanted the money spent on other roads – proposed an alternative motion.<\/p>\n

She moved that Councillors embark on an inspection tour to view the region’s problem roads firsthand before coming to a final decision<\/p>\n

Cr Duff’s motion was seconded by Cr Jane Erkens and carried 5-2, with Crs Schumacher and Henschen opposed.<\/p>\n

Councillors took their inspection tour on Tuesday and Wednesday this week using a mini-bus.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The result is that a final decision on where the $2.2 million will be spent is now unlikely to be made until the Council’s next General Meeting on June 24.<\/p>\n

This will be just six days before the Council’s deadline to submit its list of LRCI projects to the Federal Government for final approval, or risk losing the remaining funding.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/strong><\/h2>\n

At the South Burnett Regional Council’s Infrastructure standing committee meeting on May 4, Council officers recommended 13 roads for resealing using LRCI funding.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Officers selected these roads from a list of 143 sealed roads as being the highest priority, given their importance in the region’s road network and amount of traffic they receive.<\/p>\n

The proposed roads or road sections were:<\/strong><\/p>\n