Fine weather on Tuesday provided the perfect opportunity for Mayor Neil Brown and Councillor Stuart Wilson to see the pothole eliminator at work on Forks Road.

Council added $300,000 to this year’s roading repair programme to have an extra stabilising machine work in the district. It is focused on potholes.

The stabiliser mills the top layer of the road; cement is added and then the road compacted ready for chipseal.

Mayor Brown said while the process looked simple, it relied on experienced crews testing the road base, milling it to the right height and then adding the required volume of cement.

“The extra $300,000 is being used to stabilise around 8000 square metres of road in the Ashburton District. Repairing it now, before winter, will stop these roads further deteriorating and lengthen their life.”

Council is planning to spend around $18 million on its roads in the next financial year and is looking for community approval in its Annual Plan, out now for consultation.

The $18m covers road maintenance, renewals, stabilisations and repairs, as well as reseals of some footpaths and roads.

Mayor Brown said Council planned to use $1.7m from a forestry reserve fund to help pay for the work.

“Our Annual Plan asks residents what they think of using the reserves to give our roading repairs programme a boost. Last May’s rain and floods did a lot of damage to our network and we need to catch up because roads are vital for people to get to work or school, and take our farming produce to market.

“We know that increasing numbers of big trucks on our roads over the past years are also taking a toll. Roads built 30 years ago were not subject to the same volumes of freight and weight.”

Mayor Brown said this was coupled with a reduced amount of money coming from Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency to maintain roads.

“So we will also be lobbying the decision-makers in Parliament to ensure districts like ours get more of a share of the road user charges and petrol excise duty that they collect.”

Ashburton District has one of the biggest roading networks in the country and its roading contractor HEB has had two pothole repair crews, each with a special road stabilising machine, working in the district while the weather is still warm.