Ashburton councillors have again stressed they need to get better at delivering projects on time after carrying over $2.4m of unfinished work into the new financial year, the lowest amount in the last five years.

Carry-over money is from work that had been budgeted for but was either never started or not completed in the last financial year.

With the Government introducing a 2-4% rates cap, councils are under pressure to be efficient with spending and delivery.

Deputy Mayor Richard Wilson said he supported the carryovers, but with a huge 'but'.

“Councils have a bad habit of carrying money forward, because they haven’t got the work [done] or they have over committed.

“We need to be quite strict because we are getting rates from the public, from the community, that if we are not spending just sit in our accounts.

“We need to be a bit tougher on this going forward.”

Wilson has made similar comments in the past when the carryover figures were much higher.

In 2023, the council signed off $38.9m in carryovers, almost double the previous year’s tally of $14.6m. At the time, Wilson suggested they needed to “reassess what is achievable” in future planning.

“Perhaps we are better to do everything well than trying to do too much.”

The next year, a much lower $10m carryover had him state the council needed to complete its planned work on time and on budget.

“We need to ensure that the money is spent when we say it (will be).”

And last year when it was a $9.1m he said the carryovers needed “more rigour around them”.

Third-term councillor Carolyn Cameron shared a similar sentiment.

“When we look at the long-term plan, we need to make sure that we actually can undertake the work that we commit to in an annual basis because otherwise not only does it disappoint the community, but we're rating for work that we haven't actually done, which is not good.”

Her comments also echoed what she said the previous year, when she stated that “we need to be more vigilant that the projects that we commit to in the year are actually undertaken”.

The main contributors to the $2,074,302 of capital and $330,172 of operational funding being carried over are $3,156,917 in the property budget, which includes the Rokowhiria art gallery and museum air conditioning upgrade ($2,904,430) that is currently underway.

However, the removal of $2.3m of roading, in recognition of road work completed ahead of schedule, reduced the carryover figure.

The councillors also went through the financial end-of year Report for 2025/26 which revealed a previously estimated $1.8m overspend in the solid waste budgets, which had been expected to take 10 years to repay, came in at about $300,000 and will now be paid off over two years.