Rain won’t flood Council budget

TWEED ratepayers can rest easy – this year’s big wet has not washed out the council’s budget, so far.

Despite potholes opening up across the shire and gutters forming down the middle of some gravel roads, Tweed Shire Council’s works manager Ian Kite said the extra costs will mostly be met by redistributing priorities.

Mr Kite said the continuing wet weather and water damage simply required the council to do repair work rather than use staff to do planned or preventative work.

“Our costs are going to be the same,” Mr Kite said, “with the exception” of some penalty rates during the initial storms about three weeks ago which caused out-of-hours call-outs.

Mr Kite said it would take the council about three weeks to get on top of the workload caused by potholes opening up and gravel roads being affected by the rain.

“There’s no individual thing we could say is costing us a bucket of money,” he said. “It’s just the increase in potholes.”

As the Tweed enjoyed blue skies in the past few days, weather bureau statistics showed that despite the healthy rainfall the past week has been mostly damp rather than wet. The wettest day was Wednesday last week when Tomewin received 28mm, Murwillumbah 20mm and Barneys Point 13mm.