When you have an entire city to maintain as Mayor, you want to make sure that the people who live in your communities are safe. This can be difficult when your city's budget is limited. One of the best ways you can protect your municipality and promote healthy economic growth is in keeping the roadways safe for transportation. Learn what you can do to help protect your municipality's roads on any budget, so all modes of transport can be made safer for everyone.

Keep ice off the roadways in cold weather

You may have a road plow service on duty to keep snow and drifts from slowing drivers down, but ice is a major concern as well. Make sure your municipality has an ample supply of salt that can be sprayed on the roads to melt ice and keep roads clear. Assign this task to your roadway department, and check frequently to make sure that enough road salt is available in winter months, so you can adjust your budget as needed. Road salt can be used alone or combined with other substances to increase the salt's melting ability and save you money. Molasses and beet juice are a helpful addition to road salt, as it allows the salt to melt more quickly and keeps salt chips from damaging cars. Cheese brine works much the same way. These alternatives are wonderful when road salt supplies are too expensive for your cities to afford or when salt is scarce as the colder months dredge on.

Repair well-used roadways

Hire paving contractors from companies like Rubydale Asphalt Works Ltd who work in municipality or commercial specialties to keep your roadways safe for travel. As Mayor, it is your job to make sure that great contractors are hired that can work within your limited budget.In an area where weather fluctuations cause roads to sink and swell, it's important that you always have contractors on-hand who can perform certain repairs for you. These repairs include:

• filling in cracks and potholes
• removing and replacing old and uneven sections of road
• diagnosing unhealthy road issues
• building new roadways to avoid congestion

Many paving contractors work with municipalities on a contract basis. See if you can find a company that can work with a certain yearly budget, or one who can perform repairs as needed so you can save your small allowance for major paving and construction projects.

Encourage safe driving in your city

Hold a city meeting and invite the general public to attend. Explain to the attendees how safe transportation can help protect people and the roads they drive on. Encourage residents to remove snow and studded tires in the spring to avoid damaging roadways, to watch out for potholes, and to report any road damage they see so you can have issues repaired as soon as possible. Getting your community involved helps keep the roads safer for everyone.

When you have a large municipality to run on a limited budget, keeping your roadways safe can seem more difficult to achieve. You can protect your transportation avenues in many ways by using paving contractors to perform repairs, keeping roads safe in winter and letting your community get involved in road protection and safety. This creates a more productive municipality for everyone, and can be done an any city budget, so you as Mayor can feel more comfortable about your residents being on the road.