City Rd receives a funding boost

Councillor Rohan Leppert has played a key role in helping secure $500,000 to help kick start the City Rd master plan in this year’s 2018/19 council budget.

After any notable funding was again left out of May’s draft budget, Southbank Residents Association (SRA) president Tony Penna raised the matter at council’s special Future Melbourne Committee (FMC) meeting on June 20.

While acknowledging council’s efforts with major capital works projects at Southbank Boulevard and Boyd Park, Mr Penna said he couldn’t understand why the 2016 approved master plan had fallen off the radar.

“I was up here this time last year talking about how City Rd wasn’t funded in the budget,” he said. “The City Road Master Plan is almost two years old, it is new and there is a timeline in there that says that this project should be starting in this next financial year.”

In a welcome surprise to Southbank, Cr Leppert moved a motion at the meeting that will see $500,000 put towards new pedestrian crossings between Alexandra Ave and City Rd west in the next financial year.

“This is something that we all want to get on with,” Cr Leppert said. “It was a massive issue in the election campaign as well.”

“We know that City Rd is something that residents are crying out for and hopefully this is going to address many of those concerns and be a lot clearer about rolling out that wonderful master plan as quickly as we can.”

In a move unanimously supported by his fellow councillors, the motion also included a commitment to complete all remaining designs for the master plan with an intention of progressing City Rd west in the 2019/20 budget.