Born from "shovel-ready" government funding in 2020, the first stage of the Queenstown town centre arterial road was originally expected to cost $86.5million.
At the council’s first regular meeting for the year in Queenstown yesterday, councillors were presented with two options — approve a revised budget of $128.02m to enable the completion of stage 1, or cap funding and see a "structured demobilisation" of the project.
Prior to the vote, councillors spent an hour questioning representatives of both the council and the Alliance, the consortium responsible for delivering the project.
While further requests for budget increases could not be ruled out, they had a "high level of confidence" future impacts would be minimal as most of the work underground was drawing to a close, Alliance programme manager Edward Husband said.
"In any project we’ve ever done, anything underground is where we’ve had the most risk and the most uncertainty."
Deputy mayor Quentin Smith called for a greater relationship between the Alliance board and council, stating that there "has to be some accountability" for any cost blow-outs.
He questioned why councillors were being presented with yet another budget increase request while they still waited for the results of a review into the Alliance they had asked for last year.
QLDC chief executive Mike Theelen said the review had been delayed, but as its focus was on "lessons learned", he did not think it was "determinative of this decision" concerning the budget increase.
Cr Lyal Cocks said the report presented to the council had been "sobering", but stepping away from the project now was not an option.
"Not to finish it would be to dig a bigger hole for us now and for the next council, and something I don’t support."
Cr Niki Gladding, the sole member to vote against the motion, said she was in favour of completing the project but wanted the council to investigate options that did not necessarily involve the Alliance.
"I want to complete it — it’s just how and when and for how much and with who?"
With a newly approved budget, stage 1 of the arterial project is due to be open and operational by Christmas Eve, and fully completed by March 31 next year.
