Lismore roads will only get worse, council email reveals

DESTROYED and potholed roads are on the back-burner for Lismore City Council as they prioritise preventative road works in the local government area.

WAITING, WAITING: Concerned resident Murray Ings at the bridge on Mountain Top Road near Jiggi where the barrier was washed away by the rains in March 2017. Picture: Marc Stapelberg

SOME of the region's most dangerous roads are likely to get even worse before they are funded or fixed.

In an email provided to The Northern Star, Lismore City Council told one affected resident that the council relied heavily on state and federal funding to fix the worst roads in the area.

This means waiting for roads to get bad enough to qualify for grants such as the Black Spot Program.

Frustrated Mountain Top resident Peter Young wrote to the council about the state of the roads in his region.

But, in an emailed reply, council staff said they needed access to funds from Federal Government grants they could afford to fix troublesome roads such as Blue Knob Rd.

Mr Young labelled this approach of "waiting for pieces of road to have severe accidents so they can then claim on the Black Spot Program” as the "most wilful strategy I've ever seen”.

"I just don't get their priorities, I think relying on outside funding rather than on their own ratepayer funding is very poor and negligent strategy,” he said.

Page MP Kevin Hogan said the Federal and State governments had given councils in the area more than $70 million to improve roads post March flood.

"I think council obviously has a big job to do and need to keep doing it,” Mr Hogan said.

"We don't drive the bulldozers, the councils obviously have their own work teams, they prioritise the jobs as well.”

The council's email to Mr Young explained the council had ditched the old "fix the bad roads first” policy and adopted a preventative strategy in its quest to repair the region's roads.

"Within the set budget available to us we have to decide whether to spend all the money on fixing the worst road and let another three deteriorate into worse condition,” a council staff member wrote.

"Or whether to spend the minimum amount necessary to keep the worse road safe.”

They estimated if they were to reconstruct the 4km of Blue Knob Rd it would cost them 80% of the budget for road reconstruction projects in 2017/18.

Mr Young said if that estimation was correct, then council should seriously consider restructuring their budget.

"They need to review what they are spending their ratepayer's money on because that is an inadequate road budget if 80% would go on 4km of one road,” he said.