Funding windfalls from the Te Puke highway hand over means the Western Bay of Plenty District Council will seal an additional 12km of roads this year.

The 2015/16 roading budget has a surplus of $1.41 million, and the 2016/17 roading budget has a surplus of $1.25million.

The committee decision is to spread the bounty around, with $1 million being used for seal extension, and $180,000 will go towards concreting 650m of the Katikati Summerset cycle trail.

The balance will be allocated by staff into urban road non seal extension works, says Mayor Ross Paterson.

'It's not going all just into one,” says Ross. 'One or two wanted it to all go into seal extension but the decision was to spread it around.

'That's this year's surplus which ends in a couple of weeks. There is also a projected surplus next year of $1.25m and 500 thousand of that is definite, it's already existing.

'That has also now been drafted towards seal extension and the other $750,000 left in a contingency fund for the operations committee to allocate.

'It's not often we get that sort of surplus over a couple of years and are able to make those sort of decisions. It will mean that we are able to get a good contract because of the figure. It totals about $3.5 million we have available with funding we have allocated in the budget.

'With that money we will be able to go out and get a contract for sealing somewhere about 12 km next year. Good tender prices and get economic return out of it. More k's for the dollar.”

The priority for resealing will be discussed at the council's next operations committee meeting. Road that have more traffic will get priority, says Ross.

'Before it was spread across vehicles, houses, dust effects on crops, and benefit cost,” says Ross. 'Now we are saying really the main driver should be vehicles. So that priority list will come to us for discussion.”

The staff report states the $1.411 million comes from the LTP roading budgets which included provision for works on the Te Puke Highway. At the time of budget preparation the revocation agreement had not been completed and maintenance costs were still being negotiated.

The final agreement resulted in a budget surplus in 2015/16 of $561,000 of roading rate not required. The LTP budgets did not include an allowance for NZTA subsidy on administration, overheads salaries as there were changes to the NZTA rules as part of the FAR review.

The council is claiming for these costs and this has resulted in a budget surplus of $750,000 in roading.

The second surplus occurred as the budget for costs associated with the revocation of SH2 prior to negotiation with NZTA were set prior to the revocation agreement. There is an agreed renewals and safety improvements programme now funded by NZTA H&O. The maintenance budget is now clear, renewals will not be required in 2016/17.

This generates a Te Puke Highway budget surplus of $500,000 rates funding in 2016/17. The change for 2017/18 will be different and will only be assessed once the Te Puke Highway works are completed.

The income from the NZTA administration component was not budgeted. The project is $750,000 for 2016/17. There is an element of risk with this claim. The ability to generate the same income in 2017/18 has a greater degree of uncertainty as we may have exceeded the subsidised programme total.

The total projected transportation surplus is $1,250,000.

'I'm pleased for it because we do get many requests in our submissions for seal extension and when we are able to respond like that I think is a good position to be in for ourselves to deal with the problem that we have got, because we still have 188 kilometres of metal roads,” says Ross.