A FRESH $50 million commitment from the NSW Government to help the state's councils fix their proliferating potholes is welcome but is nowhere near enough, according to Bathurst's mayor.
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Robert Taylor was in the Hunter Valley on Tuesday morning to hear Minister for Regional Transport and Roads Sam Farraway announce that the NSW Coalition would make the extra money available.
Mr Farraway said councils will be able to apply for funding under the new Fixing Local Roads Pothole Repair Round for their highest priority repairs.
The $50 million will be available to 95 regional councils and authorities for regional and local roads and work must be completed by January 1, 2024, he said.
Cr Taylor said Bathurst Regional Council would certainly be taking advantage of the funding.
"We will apply for whatever we can get," he said.
But after another wet month (Bathurst has had almost 100 millimetres in October and Hereford Street has been closed twice in the past six weeks) in a wet year (the city is almost 200mm above its long-term average rainfall to October), the problem of potholes is showing no signs of slowing.
And as floods spread across the state, many NSW councils are in the same boat.
IN OTHER NEWS AROUND BATHURST:
Cr Taylor said the $50 million in funding was a welcome announcement, but would be spread thin once various councils applied.
"Anything is better than nothing, but it's not anywhere near enough money," he said.
Coming into harvest season and the Christmas break, something needed to be done about the state of the roads, he said.
Asked if Bathurst Regional Council was hearing regularly from locals about the problems of potholes, Cr Taylor said council gets "email after email" on the subject.
Sometimes, though, the complaints are about Crown roads for which council is not responsible, he said.
Bathurst Regional councillor Warren Aubin - a driving instructor with 26 years' experience who is also on council's road traffic committee - also said any new funding for pothole repairs would be welcome, but emphasised that it could not be a band-aid fix.
He said throwing a "bucketful of blue metal into a hole" would not solve anything in the long term.
"It has to be done properly," he said.
He said Bathurst Regional Council's annual budget allocation for pothole repairs is $600,000 to $700,000, so if the city could receive something close to that figure out of the new $50m, it would be a valuable boost.
But Cr Aubin, like Cr Taylor, said the $50m would be spread quite thin across 95 eligible councils considering the scale of the current problem.
