Despite Ballarat City Council claiming the number of road repairs is steadily decreasing across the municipality, a look at the numbers reveals there hasn’t been that much progress at all.
Thanks to Council’s move towards transparency in publishing road maintenance data, it was revealed on the 13th of January there were 731 jobs outstanding, that number 702 in the week ending 20th of January, and as of the 3rd of February there’s still 683 to be completed; that’s an improvement of just 48 in four weeks.
Speaking to Radio Ballarat in January, Cr. Peter Eddy envisioned the work would move much faster than the progress we’re currently seeing.
“When you think about it if we get 100 (jobs) a week done we’re talking seven weeks. Yes, we had 22 new jobs over the last week but I’d hope they’re going to diminish as we keep getting the work done. So I still think we’re in a really good place” Cr. Eddy said.
That has unfortunately not been the case. Cr. Eddy was speaking of 22 jobs being added in the week ending January 13. In the most recent data – week ending the 3rd of February – there were another 42 jobs added, meaning job reporting nearly doubled in that time.
Additionally, as opposed to hoping to complete 100 jobs per week, the most recent weekly data shows just 50 were completed.
Council says with residents able to report a road repair issue easily through its new ‘Snap Send Solve’ app, the number of jobs reported has slown the progress of whittling down the amount left to complete.
The app allows people to easily report an issue to the maintenance tracker.
