Budgets for projects in the Queenstown-Lakes district over the next 10 years have been rejigged to find another $37million for the new arterial road through the town’s centre.
Queenstown-Lakes District councillors last week signed off a raft of alterations to budgets up to 2031 to find the money for the work from within the existing budget.
Money was found for the project and other, smaller, projects council staff said needed to be reprioritised, through a series of transfers and trade-offs.
The increased arterial budget takes the total cost of the first stage to $86.6million, up from the original budget of $49.5million.
The council’s contribution to the project was now $52.9million, though it was hoped more government funding would be forthcoming for the project next year.
A staff report to councillors last week said the work was costing more than initially budgeted for because it made sense to do other work (mainly water infrastructure upgrades) at the same time, unexpected land acquisitions were needed, and there were extra costs and cost escalations since the original budget was drawn up. The latter amounted to about $20.9million.
Council staff said a total of $42.4million, including the extra needed for the arterial, needed to be found for multiple projects that would need the funding before the long-term budget was revisited in 2022.
The budget review exercise ultimately resulted in a total reduction in spending in the overall 10-year budget of $11million.
About $7million of budgeted water infrastructure work was transferred to the arterial project’s budget as it would have needed to be done as part of that anyway.
The main trade-offs were in water treatment and public transport projects.
The most significant change was removing half the $20million set aside for improvements at the Two Mile water treatment plant in the next decade.
About $7.7million of that $10million will now go into the arterial work, and the rest to other projects.
A report from staff noted the plan had been to create a water treatment plant with 30 years of projected demand capacity that used a relatively expensive treatment technology.
A lower cost solution was still expected to achieve compliance with drinking water standards, however, it was unlikely to provide capacity for 30 years and might use technology that had higher performance risks.
Those risks could be partially managed by buying land and securing consent conditions that allowed for the footprint of the plant to be extended in future, and for alternative treatment technology to be retrofitted if required.
The new budget would not be enough if there was a treatment technology failure, for example the lower cost treatment solution might not be able to cope with the unique algae found in the district’s lakes, or if there was rapid demand growth, staff warned.
About $2.8million from the budget for a bus interchange was transferred to the arterial project, as was about $2.2million from a project to find interim parking solutions in the town centre and/or continue negotiations for a privately developed parking building.
Staff said there would still be enough money in the parking project budget (about $2.5million) to provide for an interim parking facility in the town centre, develop a parking strategy, and start a request for proposal process for a parking building.
Councillors approved the alterations without any discussion or debate in public.
