While Wednesday night’s election of a new mayor and deputy has dominated headlines this week, councillors and senior staff are also continuing work on the new budget.

As part of the planning process, councillors have the chance to push for funding for issues that particularly concern them and roads funding is always near the top of the agenda.

Councillor Warren Aubin said he would be seeking an extra $2 million in next year’s engineering budget to tackle problem roads across the region, but particularly around the central business district.

Cr Aubin spends plenty of time on the road as a driving instructor and said he had seen surfaces deteriorating.

He also wants to see council start chipping away at its growing roads infrastructure backlog, put at more than $15 million in a report by the NRMA last year.

“I’m keen to keep working to get local roads back to the glory days because they took a bit of a hammering last year with all that weather we had,” he said.

“Bathurst is not the only place with bad roads – you see them everywhere – but I’ve put in an application for an extra $2 million in this year’s budget to be directed to local roads.”

Among the roads on Cr Aubin’s hit list are:

Last year’s engineering budget totalled around $18 million.

Councillors have previously committed to keeping general rate rises to the 15. per cent cap imposed by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal, meaning any increase in spending will place increased pressure on other areas of the budget.

The current group of councillors has always resisted the temptation to seek permission for a general rates rise above the IPART cap.

“We haven’t had a general rates rise above the cap since I’ve been on council,” Cr Aubin said.

A draft 2017-18 is expected to be tabled at council in early May and the public will then be given 28 days to provide feedback.