Tararua councillors' concern over capital expenditure

Councillors were assured at a meeting last week that the project management team was working to resolve issues in the carry forward budget. Photo / NZME

Councillors expressed concern at the budget carry forwards in the Tararua District Council capital works programme.

In a full council meeting last week, councillors were presented with a report that stated the carry forwards would increase the total capital budget from $30.5 million to $37.3m.

Project management office lead Adam Gosney told councillors that in looking at the 2020-21 carry forwards, they'd seen a reversal of a trend of the few years prior where the value of the projects carried forward had decreased.

"The previous year we were down to two and a half million [dollars] of carry forwards, then we've had this spike to over seven."

Gosney said not all, but a lot of the funding for capital works came from the ratepayers and that was not taken lightly.

He said there were several reasons for the increase, which included the ramifications of Covid-19 around supplies, as well as availability of contractors.

"There's the challenge of lockdown, then what comes out of that is supply and contractor availability."

There were also challenges in terms of seismic improvements, strengthening work and wastewater.

Gosney said they were looking to be more strategic about capital works.

He said as an example the wastewater works, which was just under $1m, aligned with the master plan around the Three Waters wastewater systems.

"It made sense to taihoa a little bit, be strategic about it and make sure it aligns to the master plan."

Of the $7,287,000 proposed to carry forward into the 2021/22 financial year, a little over $2m was left in the budget for Route 52, which was a multi-year project.

That left roughly $4.3m as a carry forward.

"Which is still high, and still an increase from the prior year but as a percentage of success it's not seven, it's four. So it doesn't hurt quite as much."

Gosney said the team did feel the respective pressure to be successful.

"There's a budget … and there's a level of work that we're committed to achieving.

"To mitigate that and make sure that we do achieve the percentage that we aim for on an annual basis, it starts with a realistic scope of work.

"It's not uncommon for year one of a long-term plan to be a bit challenging. [It's] no excuse but we do need to be realistic in what we set in a capital works programme."

Gosney reassured councillors that it was a team approach.

He said the team were being up front for anything that wasn't tracking particularly well and looking at what the issues were.

Councillor Peter Johns said it looked like Covid was being blamed for a lot of things.

"I'm not so sure that Covid's had a lot of effect on a lot of things. It's easy to use it as an excuse, particularly in our area."

He asked why Covid was the issue.

Gosney responded saying that in terms of wastewater, it was a combination of things, including consenting challenges and internal capacity challenges and that it wasn't necessarily a Covid issue.

Councillor Shirley Hull said governance just wanted to be reassured that the works programme wasn't going to impact on the following works programme.

She said projects rolled over could impact on work council needed to get done in the next two or three years.

The response was that the projects carried forward were from the last financial year and were being delivered now, and the majority would be completed.

In terms of wastewater projects, these were effectively put on hold until the council had a master plan so they could move forward based on informed decisions.

Mayor Tracey Collis also reminded those present that information on council projects were available on the website should any ratepayers or residents want to read up on them.