The Far North District Council's economic development committee has been unable to make a decision on an issue Mayor John Carter describes as "difficult".
At its recent meeting, the committee referred to the full council whether to approve a $95,000 grant of ratepayer funds to the Warawara Forest Economic Development Project to build 2km of road access into the forest. Te Runanga o Te Rarawa, an administrator of Warawara Forest along with Northland Regional Council (NRC), Department of Conservation (DoC) and conservation group Reconnecting Northland, applied for the grant.
The 2km road upgrade, proposed for later this year, would improve pest control workers' access to DoC tracks and be infrastructure for future development, such as iwi-led tourism and educational programmes.
A report by Joanne Field, strategic planning and projects manager, said the council could not fund the upgrade out of the roading budget because it was not a public road. Instead, the money could be a "one-off grant" from the economic development budget.
But the recommendation ignored due process, economic development committee chairwoman Di Maxwell said.