Cade Lucas
Normally residents appreciate councils doing maintenance works and amenity upgrades on their street.
But when Wyndham Vale’s Braydon Keenan-Wale returned home from work last Monday afternoon, he found subcontractors employed by Wyndham council had destroyed rather than improved the area in front of his Flinders Crescent home.
“I had a garden bed stretching from my mail box to the gutter that has been torn up,” said Mr Keenan-Wale of the damage left by workers on January 29.
“The crushed rock I had in it has been disposed of and two granite boulders that I had have been rolled onto what’s left of my grass about 10mm away from my water meter.”
The subcontractors had begun laying a footpath in front of homes on Mr Keen-Wale’s side of the street where previously there hadn’t been one.
Mr Keenan-Wale knew some work would be occurring after finding a notice in his letter box that morning.
A phone call from his wife on the way home telling him to ‘stay calm’ indicated he’d likely be unimpressed with the outcome.
He was still taken aback.
“I thought it would be bad, but the footpath is a lot wider than I thought,” said Mr Keenan-Wale who is angry with the lack of consultation and for-warning of a new footpath being put in and the careless attitude of the workers doing it.
“Just how they just piled everything up in the front yard and the garden bed on my side of the boundary, they just sort of tore that up,” he said.
“They’ve cracked the driveway which they’ve said they will repair but we live on a blind corner and we rely on the driveway a lot.”
In response, Wyndham council said the Flinders Crescent works were originally planned for 2022, but were delayed by program changes and that residents were notified on multiple occasions before they began.
“Residents in Flinders Crescent were advised in late November 2023 that footpath construction
works would be going ahead,” said a council spokeperson.
“Residents were advised to contact council officers if they had any
questions or concerns. Council did not receive any feedback or contact from residents in Flinders Crescent.”
A Wyndham council spokesperson added that residents were again notified of the impending works on January 24, but Mr Keenan-Wale disputes this, saying the letter can only have arrived in his letter box on January 28 or 29.
Wyndham council confirmed a driveway was damaged and would be repaired, but that otherwise the site was in satisfactory condition.
The name of the company subcontracted to lay the footpath is unknown.
