Roads, Rates and Rubbish - 1980s

Traditionally, Councils had their main focus on the three Rs - Roads, Rates and Rubbish. I have spoken before about the Shire of Pakenham slides which I have scanned - so here a representative lot showing the three Rs in the 1980s!

 The Pakenham Shire and the City of Berwick were formed on October 1st, 1973 when the Shire of Berwick split, with the Cardinia Creek being the boundary. The Pakenham Shire became the  Cardinia Shire officially on the December 15, 1994 at 4.00pm. The Cardinia Shire consists on the old Pakenham Shire, the rural eastern parts of the Cranbourne Shire and Emerald and surrounds, which came from the Sherbrooke Shire.

I believe this was taken in 1993. The population of Pakenham was 25,648 at the 2011 Census.

Amongst the slides were these two, above and below, obviously done for a presentation, explaining the Rates notice and how the Shire spends its money - in 1981 when the slides were created  the Council budget was just over $5 million and 38% was spent on roads, streets and bridges. The Council budget is now about $93 million.

Rubbish - being collected in the old fashioned manner, where 'garbos' physically picked the bins. For Health and Safety reasons this has now been stopped.  Truck owned P.H & E.P Young, Ballarto Road, Cardinia.

Roads - Shire of Pakenham digger. 

Finally - just to prove that rate payers received other services for their rates - here is the Pakenham Library, taken in June 1981.  The Council obviously wasted no rate payer money on aesthetically  pleasing features when they built this building, utilitarian is perhaps the kindest description we could use.  The Library was opened in 1979, in John Street when it was a dead end, before Safeways and the Target shops were built.  There is an aerial photograph of the building here.  This Library was replaced by the second John Street Library in 1991.