Additional parking bays
Two additional parking bays will be created at the Warragul Leisure Centre for disabled parking.
Three standard car parking bays will be lost to create the new accessible bays.
Baw Baw Shire received a letter and petition signed by 57 people requesting council provide additional and more appropriately located disabled parking spaces at the leisure centre.
The petition was lodged on behalf of the Aqua Movers Group.
A report to council said when the leisure centre was redeveloped in 2015, accessible parking bays were installed in the parallel spaces beside the back wall of the building.
However, officers said these accessible bays were not installed in accordance with Australian standards. The bays need to be at least 3.2m wide but in this case, the bays are only 2.23m wide so they were subsequently removed.
Officers said council was contacted in 2017 with a request for “seniors only” parking along the back wall of the leisure centre.
Council officers undertook a parking study over an eight hour period from 8am till 4pm on June 27, 2017 which was the Aqua Mover Group class day.
The survey aimed to obtain the occupancy level and the duration of stay of the vehicles using the car park. However, the secondary objective was to observe if senior citizens were parking too far away from the entrance of the centre.
The survey determined the peak occupancy was 53 per cent and therefore a preferential parking area for seniors would not be supported.
Council was again contacted earlier this year for additional accessible parking spaces.
Further investigation by officers on a day of Aqua Mover classes showed the maximum occupancy rate during the day was 39 per cent.
The 137 parking spaces include four accessible bays located 50m from the entrance of the building; seven standard parallel bays along the side exterior wall of the building; and, 126 angled parking bays in the back car park.
Officers said the required number of accessible parking bays required to meet standards was three.
While council was not obliged to provide additional accessible parking spaces, councillors agreed to install an additional two spaces in the back car park, which will result in the loss of three standard car parks. Officers said the cost of this would be $3000. Cr Danny Goss said this matter had been ongoing for a number of years.
He said this was the best alternative to providing dedicated seniors carparks.
Cr Joe Gauci said this was a good start to addressing the concern and “allows us to go back to the group and give them an outcome.”