COUNCIL tax payers were today told it could cost them £6.50 each to have all roads in their borough gritted in bad weather and were asked: "Are you prepared to pay?"
The leader of Blackburn with Darwen Council Bill Taylor said it would take a 143 per cent rise in the council's winter maintenance budget to ensure all roads could be treated.
But that figure does not include the cost of having to pay for new machinery, just the cost of keeping gritting vehicles out on the road longer, extra grit and salt and staffing costs.
The current budget is £330,000 a year.
Coun Taylor said the budget would have to rocket by an extra £476,190 a year to cover the cost of gritting all of the borough's roads.
That equates to a rise of around £6.50 per council tax bill for the borough's 75,000 homes.
The average Band D tax rate is currently £1,010.52 but is expected to rise this year after poor settlement figures from central government.
Coun Taylor hit out as opposition councillors blasted the council for not gritting enough roads quickly enough.
The RAC last month condemned councils for making the link between budgets and how much gritting they do, revealing many councils only grit 30 per cent of their roads.
Blackburn with Darwen Council insist they do nearer 50 per cent.
Liberal Democrat and Conservative councillors claimed many so-called priority routes, including bus routes, were not gritted during a cold snap which hit the area between Christmas and New Year.
They have called for public consultation to see what should happen in the future.
Coun Taylor said: "We will consult the public through our regular channels, including our Citizen's Panel.
"We will present them with the facts.
"The budget would have to rise 143 per cent to be able to grit every road and I dare say we would need extra vehicles.
"Those vehicles would be mothballed for the most of the year.
"Do people want to lose a school, a social services centre or money from libraries? These are the questions we will be asking."
There was widespread condemnation of the council over Christmas after gritters began spreading salt and grit at 4pm on Saturday, December 29 -- and then got stuck in queues of traffic leaving Blackburn Rovers and the shopping centre.
Coun Colin Rigby, leader of the Conservative group, said: "The solution isn't charging people more, because we already have high taxes.
"The solution is to do the job properly, get out sooner, grit for longer and realise that gritters will get stuck in traffic at Ewood after a football match."
Coun David Foster, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, said: "Many people became prisoners in their own home and our town centres were a disgrace.
"The pedestrianised areas weren't touched for days. We need to learn lessons."
There is currently no legal requirement on councils to grit roads, although suggestions have been made on which roads should be gritted, such as hospital routes, main roads and streets which are used by buses.
Last month, one of the council's watchdog scrutiny committee's called for all roads to be gritted. They did not discuss the cost. Any roads which cannot be gritted, they said, should be provided with grit bins.
Coun Ashley Whalley, the man in charge of gritting, is due to discuss the issue at this month's executive committee.
He said: "A series of recommendations have been put to my by the overview and scrutiny committee which I shall respond to this month.
"But we grit 25 per cent more roads than is recommended, have hundreds of grit bins on the the other roads and did our best in bad circumstances."
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