“There is no reduction in administration, we are only hitting the engineering department,” Cr Braithwaite said.

He suggested staging the upgrade program “so we don’t hit the ratepayers so hard”.

Cr Ian Coe said “we have to find the money from somewhere”.

Cr Bruce Cronin, who opposed the upgrade prior to his election in September, said that having looked over the depot, he now saw it in a different light. “The $3 million needs to be spent on upgrading the depot.”

General Manager, Mike Colreavy said that in round terms, it would cost council $6 million to repay the loan of $3 million over 16 or 17 years.

Road Asset Manager, Warwick Knight said that when road improvement projects within the Shire were identified they were included on Council’s List of Road Improvements.

He said the projects on this list were assessed with a priority based on a number pf factors including safety, serviceability, maintenance, the link the road had in the road network, traffic volumes, type of traffic (bus routes, commercial traffic), dust nuisance, protection of the asset and other relevant issues such as the availability of external funding contributions.

“The higher priority projects are then included on a four year Rolling Program of Road Improvements which has been developed to enable the survey, investigation and design of projects to be undertaken in advance of construction. A pre-design estimate of cost for these projects is made. All the expected funding sources for road improvements are then included and the projects that can be funded in each year are matched to these funds. The program is usually revised annually,” Mr Knight said.

“Council has built up funds for road improvements over recent years. Originally these funds were saved to address a potential commitment for Council to funs its share of projects identified in the Section 94 Road Contribution plan. The rate of development has been much slower than this plan anticipated and consequently Council has not been required to utilise its funding for the Council component of roadwork projects identified in tis plan.

“Subsequently as it was realised that the rate of development was lower than anticipated the available funds were earmarked to fund Council’s share of a proposed Regional Road Timber Bridge Replacement Program. This program was proposed by the Roads and Traffic Authority and was originally scoped to replace all timber bridges on Regional Roads over a seven year period. The program was to be jointly funded by the State Government and Council generally on a dollar for dollar basis. The original program remained unfunded by the State Government for a number of years. Recently the program has been revised and funding was made available for the number of three bridges on Regional Roads within Bellingen Shire,” he said.

Mr Knight said the current Rolling Program of Road Improvements 2007/08 to 2010/11 had been revised to include the annual repayment for the proposed loan for the upgrade of Raleigh Depot.

“The annual loan repayment amount is estimated to be $285,000. For the first repayment an allowance of $145,000 was made to reflect that expected remaining period of the current financial y ear. Consequently over the next three years loan servicing costs of $715,000 will have to be provided by deferral of road improvement projects,” Mr Knight said.

He said that after the 2009/10 financial year a large proportion of road funds available from the Financial Assistance Grant and the Special Rate Levy would be utilised on the resurfacing program, the additional allocation for road maintenance and the depot loan repayment. “The only improvements will be from grant allocations (such as the Roads to Recovery Program and the Regional Road repair Program), Section 94 road contribution funds and the allocations for Urunga, Bellingen and Dorrigo urban areas.”