April 26, 2013
The South Burnett Regional Council will continue to make roads a top priority in next year’s Budget, South Burnett Mayor Wayne Kratzmann said today.
The Council will be holding a special, day-long Roads Summit next Wednesday involving councillors, senior and mid-level managers to assess the current state of the region’s roads.
The meeting will help determine where the council needs to spend money in 2013-14. It will also assess how well flood repairs have been carried out to date.
The Mayor said some of the 2011 flood repairs weathered this year’s floods without any problems but some others did not.
One purpose of the summit would be to try to find out why, then work out ways to make future repairs more flood-resistant.
In last year’s Budget the Council allocated a record $70 million spend to regional road repairs (up 20.5 per cent on the previous year).
However a large part of this came from NDRAA grants to repair damage caused by the 2011 floods.
Mayor Kratzmann said that as far as he was concerned, roads were a “fundamental issue” for the Council because they were something that impacted all residents.
Because of this, he wanted the council to maintain focus on the region’s roads until all of them were at an acceptable standard.
He said that while 2013-14 Budget negotiations have yet to commence, one thing he wanted to assure Blackbutt residents about was that kerbing and guttering of some problem roads in the town would be carried out next year.
“This is a promise I made to Blackbutt and I intend to keep it,” he said.
In coming weeks the Mayor and Division 2 councillor Deb Palmer will be inspecting sites in Blackbutt that will be earmarked for upgrading in this year’s Budget.
