By CASEY NEILL
A SITE at Dandenong’s gateway needs an urgent makeover, councillor Jim Memeti says.
He called on Places Victoria to clean up the council-owned site it manages on Cheltenham Road, at the 8 April City of Greater Dandenong council meeting.
“It has been a couple of months now and the soil is still looking very unsightly,” he said.
“If it was one of our residents or one of our business owners I think we would take further action.
“The site is located where it is a gateway to Dandenong and thousands of cars travel through there every day.”
City of Greater Dandenong CEO John Bennie said the council was not taking the matter lightly, but delays in a clean-up seemed to be linked to recent funding and job cuts at the State Government property developer.
“They are somewhat reluctant to expend any resources on cleaning up the site,” he said.
“We are currently drafting appropriate letters under the hand of the mayor to the chairman of Places Victoria to make them very clear about what their contractual obligations are in having the site cleaned up.”
Cr Memeti first raised the issue at the 25 February meeting, where Mr Bennie said Places Victoria had advised it was working its way through quotations for the work.
“While it is not happening as quickly as one would like my understanding is that it will happen hopefully sooner rather than later,” he said.
Cr Memeti again questioned the situation at the 12 March meeting, and at that time Mr Bennie said some grass slashing had been done.
“But what we are really looking for on that site was removal of the bulk spoil,” he said.
“That comes at a significant cost and there has been a delay in implementing that.”
