By CAMERON LUCADOU-WELLS
PERHAPS a name for this debacle should be ‘Bollard-gate’.
How else can you describe a $40,000 footpath project that was to provide access for elderly residents, and is now the subject of a council review and disability access report?
Last week, Greater Dandenong councillor Maria Sampey won councillor support for a consultant to assess whether the footpath between Ambrie Crescent and the Sandown Park Hotel was too steep for wheelchair-users.
It follows complaints from Cr Sampey about why an otherwise level footpath — created for nursing home residents — was recently built over a grassy knoll at Racecourse Road and Princes Highway, Noble Park.
The council responded that the knoll had long been there to stop rat-running drivers taking shortcuts onto the highway, and the footpath met disability-access standards.
Soon after, the council’s chief executive John Bennie called for a review into how bollards — presumably to deter those rat-runners — were later mysteriously installed at the end of Racecourse Road alongside the knoll, without the knowledge of senior management.
Adding to the intrigue, Google street-view images were produced suggesting the knoll was barely visible several years ago.
Cr Peter Brown last week said he struggled to push a wheelchair-bound resident of a nearby nursing home up the hillock.
“I’m reasonably fit and strong but wheeling that person in a northerly direction was quite difficult. Over the mound, it took all my strength to restrain the wheelchair taking off [down the other side]. Heaven help any older person or a person in a wheelchair who tries to do it themselves. I fail to believe that it satisfies the requirements for disabled access. If that was its objective, it has failed dismally.”
Cr John Kelly, who opposed the disability-access consultancy, said the study was a burden on ratepayers and a “waste of money”.
Cr Sampey retorted: “Someone has to be a voice fighting to ensure [pedestrians] can use that footpath.”
The council estimates it would cost $15,000 to lower the mound under a re-laid footpath and $25,000 for a moundless footpath.
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