The NSW Government recently announced it would provide $50m to help 95 regional and rural Councils to fix potholes in their road network.
The unprecedented rainfall has impacted all parts of NSW, and therefore road conditions are challenging all across the State. Indeed, Local Government NSW recently declared a ‘Statewide Roads Emergency’ at the National Local Roads and Transport Congress.
The Hills Mayor, Peter Gangemi is calling for a Metropolitan Council Road Repairs Program so all NSW Councils can keep their roads open and to a standard residents expect.
Mayor Gangemi presented a
Mayoral Minute at Tuesday’s Council Meeting (8th November) which was unanimously supported by his fellow Councillors.
An extract from the Mayor Minute is detailed below:
The NSW Government announced in October that it would provide $50 million to help regional and rural councils fix the increasing number of potholes that were brought on by the record breaking rain. This means that rural councils can apply for funding under the new Fixing Local Roads Pothole Repair Program to address their highest priority pothole requests. Just like our rural regions, The Hills Shire has also been affected by persistent wet weather systems over a three-year period. On top of this, our residents have endured four major flooding disasters in the spate of 16 months and our roads are deteriorating much quicker than our modelling could have predicted under a third consecutive La Nina. Despite about twothirds of our Shire being considered rural, we are still not eligible to apply for this funding. In addition to the record rain, we are seeing more requests for pothole and road repairs than ever before. In 2019, Council received 1680 calls to fix potholes and carryout road patching work. This has now grown to 4783 requests in 2022 – and we still have just under two months to go.
To help address the backlog of requests, Council approved to increase our road asset maintenance and renewal budget by a further $938k in August. This is on top of the $2.4million that we’ve already spent from March to June 2022 on road maintenance and repairs. A further $1.7 million was approved during the last Ordinary Meeting of Council on October 26 for various road patching jobs across our Shire. These additional funds will make this our biggest ever road asset maintenance and renewal budget to date and will enable Council to carryout urgent repairs and tackle the growing number of potholes across our road network.
That’s why I’m calling on the NSW and Federal Governments to start a road repair scheme -similar to the one that is being offered to rural LGAs- for metropolitan councils who have also been impacted by the ongoing wet weather. This additional funding will help Council carryout these repairs and return our roads, especially those that have been affected by rain and floods, back to a standard that our residents have been calling for. Our Council is aware that road conditions is a top priority in our Shire right now and we are doing everything we can to repair our roads. However, we can’t do this alone, and we will need the support of the NSW and Federal Governments to help us through this time.
