'Fix our country roads'

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

MASSIVE deterioration of the roads in the Ngatapa area and a couple of near-misses between logging trucks and the school bus were the focus of a community meeting last night.

Responsibility for the narrow, windy country roads came under the umbrella of Gisborne District Council but repeated calls for simple maintenance and culvert clearing had gone unanswered, community members said.

Forestry company PF Olsen representative Nick Bunting said the problem was way too big for the council now.

“With respect, Tairawhiti Roads is overwhelmed. They make a lot of promises but they are not capable of fixing this,” he said.

Gisborne District councillor Malcolm Maclean said the district had a rating base of $54 million.

“To meet the roading costs here would be more than double that.”

Resident William Barclay said he had lived in the back country for 33 years and the forestry traffic was accentuating deterioration of the infrastructure.

The district used to have roadmen and regular maintenance was done when needed.

“They knew what problems would arise and did preventative work.”

A slippery slopeThe council decided to take the district’s roadmen away three years ago. Since then everything had been on a “slippery, slidey slope”

Now there were huge gouged-out areas on the roads.

This was the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff stuff and “soon everything will hit the fan.”

Resident Simon Cave said the problem was that nothing happened.

“I am losing count of the number of requests residents put in to the council. How do we get something done?”

A meeting with the council where the Ngatapa community had been promised some lights no longer needed at Muriwai, had come to nothing.

Promised passing bays so the school bus could enter the school in a safe manner had also come to nothing.

“Nothing happens — not a word from the council.”

Potholes were patched, then another one popped up — the deterioration was “massive”, said Mr Cave.

Resident Nancy Barclay said people in the area had to fix things themselves. She could not wear a skirt to town in case she needed to get her chainsaw out and cut up a tree on the road.

She had sent the council photos of eight blocked culverts in the area and had no feedback. Blocked culverts caused washouts.

Mrs Barclay said for the past 12 years she had been waiting for the drop-out to be fixed at the bottom of Wharekopae Hill.

No reply from councillorsShe had written to Mayor Meng Foon, Dave Hadfield, councillor Graeme Thompson and had not one reply.

Her son sent his apologies to the meeting, she said.

“He lives on the Tahora Settlement Road and a slip has blocked the road at the top since Monday. If it was not for the school holidays, it would have been fixed — but it hasn’t.”

Trevor Brown said some vision was required. There was a letter in a case on the wall behind him that was sent to the editor of the paper in July 1917, complaining about the state of the roads . . . and 100 years on, still there was the same problem.

A fundamental issue was physical — the rock under the East Coast was not hard, he said.

Mr Bunting told the meeting he had been living in this region and working in the industry for a long time and recognised the problem was bigger than the council could handle.

A lot of forest companies paid a lot of rates and had relatively low levels of service.

In this region, this council budgeted for maintenance every year and once that was agreed, it went to central Government, which provided 60 percent of the funding through a subsidy.

Mr Bunting said he signalled intended road usage and what was required to Tairawhiti Roads on the understanding if they signalled early enough, the roads would be upgraded.

This had not happened.

“This has been a massive problem for decades — an under-investment in infrastructure.”

A rates increase of more than 2 percent was needed. The council found it unpalatable to put up rates and a 20 percent hike would now be needed .

“It's not just Ngatapa, it's the whole region.

“We have got hundreds of kilometres of roading on very fragile soils,” he said.

There were a lot of forest owners paying rates and forestry was here to stay. It was the biggest contributor to GDP here.

“We do try to work with neighbours and the people we work for are ratepayers too.”

They could not harvest any faster because they were constrained by labour shortages.

Labour Member of Parliament Stuart Nash, the Labour spokesman for forestry and economic development including regional development, is the representative for the Ngatapa district and has been since the last election boundary realignment placed Ngatapa and Matawai in the Napier electorate.

He told the meeting he had a masters degree in forestry so understood the industry, although he had not worked in it for a long time.

Low volume road groupsMr Nash said the job of groups called low volume road groups was to provide a toolbox of options for councils and forest owners to use.

The council was technically responsible for roads but could not afford to do the necessary work, he said.

“Some people have said the councils have known for 28 years this was coming and should have planned for it.

“Councils don’t work like that — they get money in and spend the money.”

Mr Nash said councils in other districts had different ways to fund roading. For example, Southland, which claimed to have the largest roading network in the country, had a differentiated rate .

By the end of the meeting, it was agreed a meeting of the decision- makers was needed as soon as possible.

Mr Nash said he would talk to Simon Bridges, East Coast MP Anne Tolley and Mayor Meng Foon, and see if he could organise a meeting here.

“I will chase this up and get some answers.”

“The economic value of forestry is important to both this region and the country.”

The timing might be perfect.

“This is an election year.”

He would organise an audit of infrastructure here to show how bad things were.

Mr Barclay said there was a need for a cash injection from central Government.

“Or are we literally at the end of the road?”

Mr Maclean said he understood there had been a communication breakdown in the past few years.

“We want to break through that communication barrier. We have a new chief executive who is an action person and a people person. But we are strapped for cash.

“We are embarrassed but a busload of councillors will come on these roads as part of a tour of the region on October 25.”

Seventeen people atttended the meeting.