Murtoa’s Paul and Tim Petering have been pushing for council to gravel Riding Boundary Road, which serves as a direct route between the family’s farming properties.

The family has offered to pay for 50 per cent of the works required to lift the standard of the road to an all-weather access road.

This was the fourth time the request had been put before council, with councillors previously denying the request in 2009, 2016 and 2017 because the cost was too high to justify for the amount of traffic on the road.

Paul Petering wrote to council last month, saying that the 50 per cent offered was generous.

He said it was a substantial amount of his farm budget.

“It is unfair to be asking us to cough up 100 per cent when it was gravel trucks that destroyed the original gravel, as poor as it was,” he said. 

At a meeting on Wednesday, council again denied the request due to cost restraints.

Mayor Graeme Massey said the government urgently needed to provide council with more funding for roads.

“We’ve lost our Roads to Bridges funding – we need those grants restored,” he said.

“We would love to see more co-operation between council and farmers but because of funding restraints we can’t look after every gravel and dirt road that needs attention.

“Unfortunately our roads do get worn out and we have no choice but to put them into the list of roads that need upgrading.”

Cr Massey said financial restraints was an ongoing issue for councils.

“Rural councils are restricted by their budgets,” he said.

“We appreciate that farmers are paying a higher portion of the rates and we know they deserve our attention – we would love to help them, but we need help from the government to do so.

“If we could restore some of the road funding we had in the past, we would be able to plan ahead more.”

Cr Massey said denying to upgrade Riding Boundary Road was a tough decision to make.

“We decided, with regret, to deny the request as council will still incur ongoing maintenance costs if the road was upgraded,” he said.

“We would really like to help out, but this road is way down the list of roads that need upgrading – we would love to push it up, but there are other roads that really need to be fixed as well.”

Horsham Rural City mayor Pam Clarke said road funding was an ongoing battle that all regional councils were facing.

“We just seem to be going backwards – it’s a real issue,” she said. “The biggest complaint we have is from farmers about their roads and we understand that they have to get from A to B, but we just can’t get to all of the roads.

“It’s a constant battle trying to keep up the works – we have more than 3000 kilometres of roads to look after.”

Cr Clarke said all rural councils were desperate for more road funding.

“We are constantly fighting for more money,” she said.

Rural Councils Victoria chairman and Hindmarsh councillor Rob Gersch said he hoped to see more money for roads in the upcoming 2017-18 state budget. 

“We need the state government to look seriously at supporting regional and rural councils," he said.