Seal of disapproval

I arrived home one day last week at 5pm to find a Fulton Hogan leaflet in the mailbox notifying our street of resealing to be carried out the following morning for the entire day.

I went door knocking and found I wasn’t the only one in the street who knew nothing about this undertaking and we are not happy, to say the least.

I am no expert, although one of my neighbours is – he tests road seal for quality etc – but the road surface is next to perfect in our street.

We pay way too much for our rates, and get very little for them, and then to be sent a letter saying: ‘‘Oh, you may be a ratepayer, but the council doesnt give toss and we are going to dump a whole pile of unnecessary seal on your road without any notification or feedback.’’

That’s a summary and it was a complete slap in the face.

The worst thing was that Paul Smart of Fulton Hogan explained to me that because of our ‘‘area’’, we were to receive only the coarse chip sealing, which is way cheaper than the smooth, near perfect, bitumen that we already had.

That change leads to a noisy surface and probably won’t last as long, with all the buses coming and going in our tight-cornered street – especially considering the leaflet explained that we needed to be careful for at least two weeks and to avoid excessive speed, sharp turns and heavy braking!