“I think residents were pretty accepting,” Cr Speedie said.
“You know, we knew that this had to come in, we want to keep people safe, but day three and we're starting to get pretty frustrated when we're seeing, you know, 40 and 50-minute queues at peak times.
"Sometimes we're really lucky and it flows OK and you can kind of get across the border in about 15 minutes.
“But it's definitely impacting our businesses and our people.”
Cr Speedie said residents still had unanswered questions about the border closures and how their new border passes worked.
“So, you've got to remember there are 100,000 people between the two cities, we have more than 50,000 car movements every day,” she said.
“We've got services such as Centrelink and our hospital sitting in Albury, and yet we have the maternity wing sitting in Wodonga, so we have people traversing for work every single day.
“But our very vulnerable groups are really struggling through this process.
“We've got queues at our libraries just trying to print off the permit to be able to get across so that they can get to their medical appointments, etc.
“So it's pretty stressful on the community, and I guess the thing, the frustration, is really lack of answers, and, yes, the Premier of New South Wales was correct - not only do we have queues, we have lots of questions.”
Cr Speedie said she was working constantly with the Albury Mayor Kevin Mack and authorities on both sides of the border but more information was needed.
She doesn’t know the exact impacts on the region but she fears it will be significant.
“We've been drastically impacted by bushfires early in the year and COVID-19, I guess, just like everywhere else in the nation, but this absolutely adds another layer of complexity and impact,” Cr Speedie said.
“There's been more than 1000 people a day cancelling from our snowfields. We've had no tourism trade. I look around my city today and it's really quiet, as is Albury.
“So, you know, we need to be really conscious that this region can continue to work really well even without tourism - although that has a huge impact - but to not be able to operate on a daily basis for basic services and necessities is nigh on impossible.”