CHB's road maintenance would cost $11m a year

Catherine Woulfe
Either the roads or ratepayers in Central Hawke's Bay will pay the price unless the district council can convince Transit New Zealand to nationally fund routine maintenance.
Transit told a council workshop last week that the district had the third-best roads in the country but needed to spend $11 million every year to maintain them.
Meeting that figure would mean a 25 percent rate increase that would "effectively destroy the community", Mayor Tim Gilbertson said.
Spending $11 million on roading was "dreaming".
"For that money, we'd probably have gold-plated handrails on the bridges."
But he was very aware that not keeping up with maintenance was leaving a timebomb for future councils. Roads should be resealed every 12 years but currently the council was managing to reseal only 60 of the required 123km every year. To reseal 1km cost $15,000 but rebuilding roads that hadn't been maintained cost eight times that amount.
Mr Gilbertson said that for the past four or five years council had been spending about $7 or $8 million on roading and had $7 million budgeted this year.
"The happy medium would probably be about $8.5 million," he said.
The jump from current spending to what they needed to do to keep roads up to scratch would have ratepayers paying another 9 percent on top of the 8 percent they were already facing.
Council planned to ask TNZ for extra funding, but this would have to be doled out nationwide.
If it were refused, council would have to let roads deteriorate and say to future councils, "look, we're sorry, you're going to have to come up with the money later on". Other small councils were facing the same problems, Mr Gilbertson said.
"Our budgets don't yet include the five cents per litre petrol price rise or the extra four cents per litre carbon tax to be introduced next year, so the real picture is probably even more dire.
"Our audit fees have risen from $46,000 to $96,000 next year which seems rather a lot to pay for someone to come in and basically make sure no one is pinching the spoons."