By KATH GANNAWAY
AGITATION by Evelyn MP, Christine Fyffe, may see a breakthrough in a more than 40-year stalemate around car parking improvements to Wandin North Primary School.
Ms Fyffe and Shadow Minister for Roads, Ryan Smith, called last week for a resolution to land ownership issues between Yarra Ranges Council and VicRoads that have handicapped a succession of school councils wanting to provide improved car parking to cater for the growing number of families attending the school.
Mrs Fyffe said that successive principals at the school had been bounding between council and various State Government departments trying to work through the appropriate channels to make simple parking improvements without success.
Last week she went public, visiting the site with Mr Smith and calling for a round-table meeting of the various State Government departments with a stake in the issue.
The school wants to asphalt and mark the front service road on the Warburton Highway, and make improvements to a second area with the installation of bollards and designated parking areas.
The 40-year quandary is mainly over the ownership, or non-ownership, of the service road with both Yarra Ranges Council and VicRoads denying responsibility for the area.
The other car park is crown land owned by the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP). The Education Department also has a stake in the overall problem of providing safe car parking for the school.
School council member, Megan Gibbons, said the problem was getting to a point where urgent changes were needed.
“The school has grown from when I started at 70 students to 247 and pick-up and drop-off are just chaos,” she said.
“People are parking anywhere they can and you have children walking across the crossing and down the side of the highway, at the mercy of drivers on a bush highway, to meet up with their parents.
“The problem is we can’t, and have not been able to, find out who owns that front car park.”
Despite initial statements denying ownership/responsibility from Yarra Ranges Council and Vicroads, Mrs Fyffe’s desire to ‘shine a light’ on the issue, and numerous emails back and forth from the Mail to both organisations, has resulted at the end of the week in “some really good phone calls” between the parties, and some hope for resolution.
A VicRoads spokesperson told the Mail: “VicRoads will meet with Yarra Ranges Council on-site to gain a clearer understanding of the areas of responsibility and how we can all work together to achieve a good outcome for the school and the community.”
Yarra Ranges response was equally hopeful.
“We have made plans to work with VicRoads engineers to gain a clearer understanding of who is responsible for the area,” Mayor Jason Callanan said.
“Council engineers will be meeting with VicRoads representatives at the site to achieve a positive result for the school and the community.”
