Two of the city's western-most roads have been bumped up the sealing and upgrading priority list after Griffith City Council voted to put the roads forward for federal and state funding.
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Barber Road and Bringagee Road will be bumped up the priority list after a motion from Councillor Glen Andreazza seeking council to apply for funding to upgrade and seal the roads under the state government's 'Fixing Local Roads' program was voted through at Tuesday's council meeting.
The motion calls for Barber Road between Brogden Road and Twaddell Road to be sealed, as well as for Bringagee Road to be sealed between Brogden Road and the border between Griffith and Carrathool Shire.
Cr Andreazza said he brought the motion forward after being lobbied by concerned residents along the roads and noted the roads are commonly utilised for business purposes as well as ferrying children to and from school.
"Both Bringagee and Barber Roads obviously carry some fairly precious cargo which is school kids," Cr Andreazza said.
"Kids come in and out of school every day during the week from there ... Barber Road also services Grain Link Benerembah which on an average year would take on minimum about 80,000 tons of grain - this year it would be in excess of that.
"There have been trucks using alternate roads coming to Barber Road and with 5-10 millimetres of rain they become a state of disrepair and end up getting bogged, so there's B-Doubles getting bogged on other roads because they're trying to stay off Barber and preserve it."
Council's senior management team noted in the report for Cr Andreazza's motion the roads were not on a priority list provided to Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack as they were not 'shovel ready' and investigation and costings would need to be undertaken regarding the roads to get them ready for the application - also highlighting it would be unlikely for both roads to gain funding considering they run parallel to each other.
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Deputy mayor Doug Curran objected to the motion, and said while he applauded the idea, the roads should not be the ones put forward for this current application as it would bring the roads above ones which have been prioritised for a long time.
"I think that there is a lot of roads in either disrepair or dirt that carry school-children and by moving these two on the basis of either school movements or private enterprise and moving it above roads that we've had on the list for a very long time isn't the way to do it," Councillor Curran said.
"I think that we should get a costing and I think that it should be added to the list, but I certainly don't think it should be used as our application for round two."
Cr Curran said it would also be difficult to seal Bringagee Road considering the road is split with the Carrathool Shire Council, but Griffith mayor John Dal Broi said the Carrathool portion of the road is already sealed and Carrathool Shire have lobbied him "many times [to seal the road] from their end of the seal to Brogden Road."
Councillor Mike Neville said the roads have been a "long term problem" and something should be done given the amount of fatalities and accidents along Bringagee Road.
"There's been fatalities, but there's also been a number of reported and unreported accidents on that road over a hell of a lot of times," Cr Neville said.
"If this is the lever that council needs ... I think in council's mind we need to probably consider all roads and review these more often given the nature of the ever changing environment in relation to accessing funding.
"[Both roads] have been used as access roads, not just in an out of the city but certainly for emergency services and the like from Hay and other communities out that way to access Griffith ... we should at least try to roll out the carpet, it may not be red, but at least it can be better than mud."
Council will now engage external consultants to investigate the scope and undertake a detailed design of both the roads before preparing costings which is planned to be reported to council by October.