THE impact of a reduced infrastructure budget was made clear at this morning’s meeting of Kincardine and Mearns Area Committee.
Officers were presenting their latest roads and infrastructure update – a schedule of planned repairs to roads, bridges, lighting and harbours and coastal flooding.
And from the start of the discussions, they made it clear they were a service trying to operate under with a B-class budget, saying their allocated funding in previous years was insufficient to meet their needs.
And it appears their current revenue budget has been slashed by 22% on last year – and officers warned inflation added to the impact of reduced budgets.
Dynamic list of repairs
With less money available, the roads department are to be focusing more on reactive maintenance, aka patching potholes.
One change implemented has been to introduce a dynamic list of works – where every road defect is assessed then added to a prioritised list. This means our councillors should able to access the list to find out where any pothole sits in the waiting list or repairs.
North Kincardine member Shirley Burnett questioned the cost effectiveness of patches which often fail and asked how it was decided to undertake more permanent repairs.
”What is the criteria,” she said, ”Is it three strikes and you are out before you get a new surface?”
Senior roads engineer Ross Anderson agreed there were failed patches, saying the biggest failure at the moment is at the bottom of Arduthie Road.
Mr Anderson said workmanship was a concern and the problem, historically, was not having enough manpower to undertake a more permanent repair – a process taking more men than we would imagine.
”We are now looking at permanent patches first time,” he said. ”We are also gong to seal the top surface around the edge as this prevents ingress of water to the edge and the patch breaking out.”
He added there was no reason a patch should not last for a number of years.
Any hope for Ramsay Road and Christie Crescent?
The Area Committe is recorded and the video is available for viewing on Youtube. If you are interested in the response to Cllr Wendy Agnew’s question about the repair prospects for Ramsay Road and Christie Crescent – and would enjoy a entertaining moment of officer/counciller banter – then listen first at 45:48, then fast forward to 57:15 for the punch line.