HOLIDAY parks like Marokopa will be viewed as profit centres by the Waitomo District Council
TRADITIONAL Waitomo district cost centres, such as the Te Kūiti Aerodrome, the council landfill, and the holiday camps are going to be reviewed as profit centres for the council, mayor John Robertson says. “The last council requested the executive to review the business plans around these. They have traditionally been treated as cost centres. “We need to understand the financials behind them,” he told councillors at a recent Waitomo District Council meeting. “We’ve treated these like cost centres before, which really means we account for them by seeing the costs go in. But on some of these things, like the holiday parks, Te Kūiti aerodrome, the landfill, they should be what an accountant would call profit centres.” In his report, he said of the holiday parks in Te Kūiti, Marokopa, Mōkau and Piopio, Te Kūiti was little used and costed ratepayers. Marokopa ran at a loss, and at Mōkau, the Tainui Wetere Domain was run by a community group without any underlying lease arrangements. Initiatives to lease out Marokopa were under way, and work to negotiate a lease at Mōkau was awaiting finalisation of a Reserve Management Plan. Work to upgrade the power supply at the aerodrome was expected to begin in the new year. Elsewhere in the agenda, it stated the landfill project was on hold while a proposed gas collection system to mitigate increasing Emissions Trading Scheme charges and the highwall stabilisation and lining are reviewed. The landfill development plan requires staged lining of the high-wall over the next 20 years. The design finish level of the existing cell will be reached in approximately two years so work needs to progress to keep ahead of that capacity limitation. The gas collection system is to be installed over the next 18 months. Modelling and design of the gas capture system has been completed with design of the gas flare still to be finalised. The project is on hold until the design is finalised. “If you add up all the capital projects, I come to $37 million, investment that has either been made in the last year or is still to be made, which is a huge capital programme for us,” John said. “So, I guess we will certainly have a lot of business around this table of signing off on these projects and monitoring them.” He included in that $15m repairing the backlog of storm damage to district rural roads, $9m on the proposed reservoir project, about another $8m on the indoors sport stadium, and more than $2m spent on the Mōkau toilets and associated parking. In addition, there was work on Te Kūiti stormwater and wastewater infrastructure. There were issues during heavy rain events with some of Te Kūiti’s underground piping network. This had always been an issue but was highlighted by the stadium project work stream.
