By Cam Lucadou-Wells
Casey Council is set to meet long-suffering residents at Prospect Hill Road, Narre Warren to talk over options on ending the area’s hoon plague.
Cr Rosalie Crestani tabled a 75-signature residents’ petition on 9 November that called for the closure of the road’s turnbowl, which has been scrawled thick with burnt tyre rubber.
She successfully moved for the council to meet the residents and present a solution by January 2018.
Residents were fed up by the “hooning and unsavoury behaviour that occurs after hours,” she said.
“If only … hoons pull their heads in and leave these people in peace.”
Michael Presta and others have told Star News of loud, smoky burnouts, drug deals, romps in cars, incinerated stolen vehicles and shredded tyres in the turnbowl.
Hoons are blamed for damaging the adjoining park’s sports field, buckling a pedestrian footbridge’s railings and smashing through a residential back fence.
There was even talk of a hoon-driven motorised esky on 13 November, Mr Presta said.
He welcomed a separate anti-hoon motion introduced by Cr Amanda Stapledon to lobby the State Government to increase powers to confiscate and crush offenders’ cars.
She said the “unashamed“ and “brazen” activities robbed people of sleep and made them feel unsafe in their neighbourhoods.
“The best deterrent for someone engaging in hooning behaviour is for them to recognise they might lose their car … they won’t get it back and it’s crushed.”
She said: “We need our police better empowered and able to apprehend and penalise the people doing this.”
Then-mayor Sam Aziz added “there isn’t room for carrots (incentives) in this business” if a child is killed or injured.
“(We should) catch these idiots out and teach them a lesson.
“We value the lives of innocent people and our children who are our future.”
Mr Presta agreed that car-crushing would get hoons where it hurts.
“It depends though on police being there to enforce it.”
Cr Stapledon also successfully moved to lobby police for more surveillance of hoons in Heather Grove, Cranbourne East, Springhill Drive, Cranbourne and Rosebank Drive, Cranbourne North.
Recently, the council added bollard and rail fencing around the parkland next to the Prospect Hill Road turnbowl.
However Mr Presta said the residents’ solution was more effective and cheaper – to install bollards across the road to stop access to the turnbowl itself.
The turnbowl could potentially be converted into a basketball half-court, he said.
“One of the residents said their grandkids would love that idea.”
