Ashburton council doubles down on resealing roads

Nicole Mathewson Reporter from The Press

By local democracy reporter Jonathan Leask:

Almost double the amount of road resealing will now take place in Mid Canterbury this summer – although the council isn't sure if it's possible.

Councillors voted to spend $2.46 million of ratepayer money on additional road seals after failing to get the funding from NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi.

The council isn't sure if it’s possible to achieve more than 100km of road resealing - double the previous financial year. If it doesn't reach the target, the council may have to revisit the decision.

The difference between the council’s long-term plan budget and NZTA funding for 2024-27 is $15m.

That funding gap meant the council had $2.46m of ratepayer money unmatched by NZTA and needed to decide where to allocate that money.

Road manager Mark Chamberlain suggested a list of priority projects, spreading some money across areas that were underfunded by NZTA to the council last week.

Mayor Neil Brown thought differently.

He suggested putting the full $2.46m into reseals to “get back our reseals to where they should be”.

Complaints about the state of the road in recent years have been well documented.

Brown called it “preventative maintenance” to avoid the roads cracking and forming potholes.

The council resealed 49.5km of road in 2023-24 but Brown said the council used to reseal over 100km per year until budget restraints had drastically reduced that figure.

It could again this year after the councillors voted 6-4 to allocate the money to additional reseal work.

Deputy mayor Liz McMillan, councillors Leen Braam, Russell Ellis, and Carolyn Cameron voted against the motion.

The council is already underway with work on 60km of subsidised reseals this summer.

Infrastructure and open spaces group manager Neil McCann said the roading team was working out how to best fit the extra reseal funding into the work programme.

Any section of road to be resealed needs pre-seal work completed first he said.

“We are looking at what areas that need resealing need the least amount of pre-seal work to maximise the number of kilometres in the time we have got.”

The aim is to convert the money into 50km of resealed road, but they won’t know how much is possible until they complete the analysis, he said.

Once they have worked it out it will go back to the council for sign-off off, he said.

Any left over funding, or if timing issues arise to complete the work in the financial year, the council could then direct some funding to other roading projects.

The $2.45m equates to about 4.6% of the district’s total rates bill ($52.5m).

The council will face the same dilemma in the next two years but could amend the annual plan to remove the unmatched funding.

The road programme also includes $500,000 of unsubsidised funding towards unsealed road metalling