Almost double the amount of road resealing will be attempted across Mid Canterbury this summer – if the council can pull it off.
Councillors have pushed through a $2.46 million spend of ratepayer money on additional road seals after failing to secure the necessary funding from the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi.
But doubts loom over whether they can hit the ambitious 100km target, more than double last year’s 49.5km.
If they fall short, the Ashburton District Council will be forced to reconsider its strategy and the value of the investment.
The funding gap with NZTA stands at a stark $15 million for the 2024-27 period, leaving potholes in the budget.
Road manager Mark Chamberlain suggested a list of priority projects, spreading some money across areas that were underfunded by NZTA.
Mayor Neil Brown thought differently, suggesting 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.
It resealed 49.5km of roads 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 hit 100km 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.
Any leftover 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 around 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.
By Jonathan Leask
