The state of Rural City of Wangaratta's roads and details of its $6 million maintenance program in 2025/26 was a topic of conversation at a forum last week.

A Your Roads Forum was hosted by council and key topics discussed were transport trends over the past decade; road condition insights; climate change and infrastructure; road maintenance investment; and resident feedback.

Some 15 residents attended to share their concerns about specific roads, with questions fielded by council director - community & infrastructure Marcus Goonan.

However, of the 15 roads queried, all of them fell under the management of state department, VicRoads.

Mr Goonan said the number of attendees was a good start and they had a conversation about how the road management plan works, how council manages workload and maintenance schedules and details about the pipeline of works.

Key roads that attendees highlighted were Greta Road, Wangaratta-Whitfield Road, Murdoch Road and Reid Street - all VicRoads roads.

"We don't shy away from the fact that we can improve the way that we manage roads.

"Queried roads that council manage are Swan Street, which we're doing works on at the moment, along with Edwards Street and Phillipson Street, which we have designs for and look to fund over the next couple of years to solve some of the concerns there as well.

"The main message out of that was, you know, we need to understand what's within council's control and what's not and where we can play an advocacy role on behalf of the community."

Mr Goonan said the forum was a conversation between council and the community, not a blame game from council.

"A couple of people have approached council asking for this style of meeting in other areas including the more rural locations.

"There was definitely a want to have state and potentially federal representation at those meetings."

"Council can only do so much advocating on on the community's behalf.

"Now, we'd really like the community to support us in some of the advocacy work that we're doing and and push things forward that way."

A staffer from Indi MP Helen Haines' office attended the forum and Mr Goonan said there could be scope in the future to invite state MPs from state government and opposition.

Underpinning all concerns in the space of roads and their condition is safety and Mr Goonan said this is the number one aspect.

"It doesn't matter where you're travelling we want everyone to get to their destination safely so that forms the key of how we go about the task at hand."

The Rural City of Wangaratta's operating or maintenance works budget in 2025/26 is almost $6 million.

In terms of advocating for roads funding at a state and federal level Mr Goonan said it will be based around advocacy for general infrastructure as well to be able to keep up with the growth.

Rural Cities Victoria has requested $2 billion for the state budget next year and council fully supports this.