Council firm on spending all its budget

The Dunedin City Council may have big plans for capital spending in the next decade, but delivering on promised spending this year is an uphill battle.

The council has $126million of capital spending planned this financial year and is well behind so far, getting through just over $43million in the period to December and leaving a lot to do between January and June.

Acting finance general manager Gavin Logie said the council was struggling to deliver the full budgeted capital programme.

"If we get to $100million, we’ll be lucky," Mr Logie said at a finance committee meeting yesterday.

Cr Jim O’Malley said this was something for councillors to consider before debate about how large the capital programme should be in the 2021-31 10-year plan.

The council has proposed an ambitious $1.5billion capital spending package in the draft plan that will be put to the public in March.

Cr Mike Lord said coming out of Covid-19 had created difficulty this financial year in planning and executing capital spending.

There remained a firm intention to deliver on promised spending on an ongoing basis.

Cr Lee Vandervis said he was more worried about the council ramping up spending than fretting over money not spent.

"I don’t think it’s a credit to us that we are massively increasing spending unless we’re getting any real value for that spending," he said.

"I’m deeply concerned that our inability to spend is seen as a negative.

"We should be very careful about the extra spending and making sure we get real value for it."

Cr Vandervis said it was clear the council would get value for money from investing in water, wastewater and stormwater systems, but less clear there was value in pet projects such as upgrading George St.

Cr Jules Radich said the public demanded the council spend money on infrastructure, but not on such things as road-safety projects.

Deputy mayor Christine Garey said capital spending reflected what the community wanted to see the council deliver.

Reasons council staff listed for the capital underspend this financial year included lower-than-expected expenditure on IT projects and delayed timing of civic projects such as the Wall St Manuka Causeway project and renewal of the Civic Centre roof.

grant.miller@odt.co.nz