Tamworth Regional Council put roads spending, transparency at top of priority list in ten-year Community Strategic Plan

Tamworth mayor Russell Webb said after listening to the community, council is working on a plan to boost spending in the area, announcing a "big injection" into roadworks over the coming years.

Improving roads topped the list of concerns for locals in a recent community survey, which guided policies put forward in Tamworth Regional Council's (TRC) ten-year Community Strategic Plan, placed on public exhibition today.

"We've just come out of some really severe wet weather, and there was a lot of people saying our roads are starting to fall apart," Cr Webb said.

"They were falling apart because of the heavy storm activity that we were getting, and of course we're now starting to play catch up."

Councillors attended a workshop last week, identifying a plan for the future of the region's road network.

"The workshop was on how we can pull some more money out of some of reserves and how we can actually start increasing the capacity of our road networks with re-sheeting, resealing and drainage works," Cr Webb said.

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He said council's forward financial predictions calculate a "small surplus" over the coming months, a turnaround from its current $3.2 million deficit.

He put the improvement down to a rise in interest rates, government funding and the expectation IPART will approve TRC's application for an Additional Special Variation.

"It is a forward prediction, it will all come together very quickly over the next couple of months," he said.

"Having that little bit of a surplus enables us to deliver what we say we can deliver to the community and what we say in the Community Strategic Plan."

A renewed focus on transparency and the development of a new communications strategy is also a top focus of the plan.

"I think that's fantastic news for our community, they're going to hear the messages more clearly, more succinctly into the future about what we're doing and more transparently and I think that's a very important message to send out there," Cr Webb said.

Our Community Plan 2023-2033 is open for comment up until June 7 at MyTRC Online.

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