WAITOMO District Council should be taking a good look at its rural roading costs, Councillor Jeanette Osborne says
“Given that roading is our major expenditure, making cuts in other areas may not have a huge impact.
“Roading costs have gone tremendously high and with the revaluations, the depreciation has also increased dramatically. Maybe, we are better to look at that part of it.”
She was speaking during discussion of the mayor’s report where John Robertson warned of tough times ahead for councils battling rising costs on several fronts.
“That does raise an interesting one too. I was down Mapara South Rd last night where logging is about to occur, and it’s a long no exit road and we are maintaining it. It’s up to I think about 14 kilometres, with very few residents on it,” John said.
“So, we have had that discussion on forestry rates, I’ve also seen at another council where they actually put a notice up at a certain part on the road that says ‘we do not maintain past this point’ – because there’s no people living on the road past that point.
“There’s things like that where we have got ideas, we should put in.”
“The massive revaluations on road causing massive increases in depreciation, we probably need a good discussion about that,” Jeanette said.
“Because that’s not affecting the level of service but it’s a huge extra cost.”
John agreed.
The roading report received later in the agenda told councillors to expect increases in inflation and material prices to be reflected in contractors’ rates in the new maintenance contract coming up for tender early next year.
Above average temperatures and finer conditions forecast for the summer are expected to allow for completion of proposed works for the 2023-24 period, alongside the works that were carried over from the previous year.
Due to limited funding for year three, the resurfacing goal will not be met. The aim was to reseal 34.5km of the network, but the forecast based on the available budget will be 21.1km, which is 4.6% of the total sealed network.
This has been reduced due to the Rora Street asphalt site being added, which has a much higher cost compared to rural chip sealing. This budget may further be affected by any drainage upgrade works.
