The South Burnett Regional Council wants to make rural road maintenance a top priority in next year’s Budget, and will do so by deferring non-essential capital works road projects in towns
South Burnett Mayor Keith Campbell

May 31, 2016

The South Burnett Regional Council plans to upgrade spending on the region’s rural roads over the next 12 months.

The money will come from deferring non-essential road projects planned for town areas.

South Burnett Mayor Keith Campbell said on Tuesday the need to carry out more work on rural roads had emerged as a key issue during the March elections, and he agreed some of the region’s rural roads were in a poor state.

The core problem was the amount of money the SBRC had to spend on roads each year was limited, he said.

But he thought the best path forward would be to defer some non-essential capital works on town roads so the money could be ploughed back into rural road maintenance instead.

“We can cover a significantly greater distance on rural roads than we can on town roads with the same amount of money,” the Mayor said.

He also thought the right time to take the decision was in the coming financial year.

This was because the Council recently received advice from the Federal Government that the Roads To Recovery funding bonus all councils received this year will be gradually scaled back to normal levels over the next three years.

The $3.8 million the SBRC received in Roads To Recovery funding for 2015-16 will be reduced to $2.6 million next year, then to $2.2 million in 2017-18, before returning to its historical level of $1.1 million in 2019-20.

The Mayor said the plan to move more funding into rural roads had emerged during the Council’s Budget discussions.

The SBRC’s 2016-17 Budget is expected to be handed down at the end of June.


 

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