By Jamie Salter
Remaining storm damage continues to be the most pressing concern for Casey residents, as heard at the City of Casey council meeting on Tuesday 15 February.
Chair administrator Noelene Duff said council will endeavour to respond to those who have contacted council regarding maintenance issues.
“With over 2,500 parks, reserves and roadsides across Casey, council uses three different contractors to maintain majority of those open spaces,” Ms Duff said.
“Unfortunately, the contractor maintaining the local parks across Casey’s central area – that’s from Lynbrook, Hampton Park, through Narre Warren and Cranbourne, Clyde North to Cranbourne East – has suffered ongoing staff shortages and long delays in the importation of equipment, particularly mowers, and that’s in part due to Covid-19.
“Our priorities do remain in servicing the sites with the longest time in between services…a maintenance schedule is being adjusted so the gap between mowing is reduced.”
Sites in the north of the municipality will be mowed every three weeks.
By mid-February all parks in central Casey will have been mowed since the new year and from then on will be mowed every four weeks.
Ms Duff said storm clean-up has been challenging for nearly every municipality.
“We’re aiming to return to normal service levels by the end of the month,” Ms Duff said.
The council has had 5,200 customer requests for storm and tree related assistance between October and December and is currently working through a back log of more than 900 jobs.
A petition was also addressed during the council meeting regarding a gum tree that presents a danger adjacent to Boree Court in Berwick.
Casey administrator Miguel Belmar recommended that council investigate the street trees and undertake action as required.
The motion was seconded by administrator Cameron Boardman and all were in favour.
The next council meeting will be held on Tuesday 15 March.
