Bureaucratic dispute blamed for unkempt nature strips in Port Phillip council

The mayor of the City of Port Phillip says the Department of Transport is to blame for shockingly unkempt nature strips throughout the council area.

It comes after 3AW Breakfast was sent photos of a wildly overgrown median strip in Middle Park this morning.

Port Phillip mayor Marcus Pearle says nature strips on major roads — including Beach Road, Beaconsfield Parade, Bay Street in Port Melbourne, St Kilda Road, Dandenong Road and the Nepean Highway — are the Department of Transport’s responsibility, but until recently, the council looked after them for the state government.

“Council used to maintain these for them but over the years the state government has been asking us to do more and more and more with less and less and less, and the budget cost to our ratepayers is now $250,000 to $350,000,” Councillor Pearle told Neil Mitchell.

“We’ve told the Department of Transport ‘We need you to take this over and look after it or you need to compensate our ratepayers because it’s not fair that our ratepayers should be maintaining state government infrastructure’.

“We stopped maintaining them in January and transferred them to the Department of Transport, and they really haven’t done a good job since.”

Press PLAY below to hear about the dispute being blamed for the eyesore