Local Council Troubles - What Can We Do?

Question

Ok, I live about 1 hour out of Launceston in a farming area.

Where I live the entrance of my road, had a small concrete bridge, which every time we get the slightest rain floods over. It's a d**n pain in the rear, because we then have to travel around which takes an extra hour into the city.

The problem is the creek that runs there is so narrow. We have taken it to the council MANY times. They couldn't careless.

We have gone as far as to say we will widen the creek bed, which runs threw the bad of half the properties, but they said NO.

We have feed trucks & vehicles that need to come to most of these farms, and we are being slogged with the extra travel costs, because of the flooding.

I don't see how they can come and put the gates up so we cannot cross the bridge, yet won't fix the problem.

Is there anything we can do??

Answer 1

We've had a similar problem with our local council over a number of creek crossings on our road. We were somewhat worse off as we were completely stranded with no alternative route so they eventually did something about it but I think that a threat of our going to the Ombudsman was what finally got them moving..

It seems to me that you have two alternatives:

1) You could make one last try with the council making sure that you get everything in writing. When that fails, take it to the Tasmanian Ombudsman. It's the Ombudsman's role to enquire independently into the actions (and inactions) of councils and other government bodies and to make binding rulings.

http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.pht...

2) You could simply widen the creek bed yourselves and take a chance that the council is too lazy to take issue with you about it. You will almost certainly get away with it if it really does improve the situation. If you adopt this approach, do it as carefully *** possible, making sure you don't step on environmental toes -perhaps some native revegetation in the area will get/keep them on side.