Ashburton Mayor Neil Brown wants to crack down on abandoned road cones “littering” the district.
The mayor said he was is fed up with road cones being left out by contractors when work is not being done or has been completed.
“If they are not being used, it’s littering,” Brown told Local Democracy Reporting.
“When they are put out and being used it’s fine, but if they are left for days, weeks, months when the work is finished, they should be fined.”
When he suggested a road cone fee during the first council budget workshop at the start of February, some in the room believed the comment was made in jest.
However, Brown was serious and proposed adding an ‘orphan road cone charge’ to the fees and charges in the region’s draft annual plan.
At the more recent budget workshop last week, he said the council need to encourage contractors to take the cones away when the work was finished.
“They are road cones when they are being used, when they are not they are rubbish.
“We need to incentivise the owners of them to take them away when they are not required.
“We have tried the [soft approach] but they are not doing it.”
Brown pointed to a recent incident highlighted on a local social media page of traffic cones and signs being left behind by a contractor, and despite being contacted, the cones weren’t collected.
“They were just abandoned.
“That’s the sort of thing we are trying to avoid.”
The situation Brown spoke of was raised by Richard Langdon.
Annoyed by several cones and signs lingering on Tinwald Westerfield Mayfield Road, Langdon said he contacted the Timaru and Christchurch branches of the contractors to “come and shift your garbage before it causes an accident”.
He said they had been there for weeks.
The cones and signs were finally picked up this week – a week after he “gave them a bloody good revving up”.
Langdon said he “absolutely supports” the mayor’s road cone fee.
The cones belonged to Men At Work and managing director Dean Hyde said this case appeared to be a simple case of human error.
“We know that gear is expensive which is incentive enough for us to collect it at the end of a job.
“The whole industry is looking at our processes to improve communication and avoid things being left out longer than they need to be.
“We want to be part of the solution, not the problem,” Hyde said.
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air
