Other things we're thinking about

There has been a lot of growth on the northern side of Taupō and in Kinloch and we know more is coming. We need to be prepared for the transport impacts of this growth to ensure existing issues are not made worse and we meet our legal requirements.

Planning for a new bridge across the Waikato River was included in the previous Long-term Plan 2021-31 as part of the Transport Asset Management Plan for 2031 to 2033.

We have heard from you that this project is important to help ease traffic congestion and save commuting time.

Over the next three years we’ll work with Mercury and iwi and hapū and begin planning for another bridge. Detailed design and consenting would start in 2027/28 and construction in 2029/30, at an estimated cost of $73.5 million. Forecasting now that we will need to pay for such a significant project will allow us to begin planning and to collect development contributions, which will reduce the amount of rates money needed.

In our next Long-term Plan in 2027 we expect to be able to share more detailed design options for you to provide feedback.

NZTA funding changes could mean we must spend more on transport

Every three years we seek funding from the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi for many of our roading projects. The agency has been signalling that due to its own cost pressures, less funding will likely be available for councils this time around.

We should know more about the level of NZTA funding we might receive soon. While this won’t be an exact figure, it provides an early indication about whether or not we will need to change the transport projects proposed in our Long-term Plan.

There are two options for Council if NZTA are not able to meet our funding expectations:

• Increase our transport budget to make up the shortfall so that we can deliver the full list of our transport projects.
• Remove or reprioritise some of our transport projects or change the scope of the project so we can meet the smaller available budget.

If we don’t receive the funding needed from NZTA, Council will make a decision on what to do before we adopt the final Long-term Plan.

Over the last four years Council has delivered the new Te Mataapuna sports facility, Te Kapua Park PapaTākaro and street revitalisation projects in Tūrangi. In our Long-term Plan 2021-31 we also allocated $15.9 million for a new Tūrangi recreation facility. The project was scheduled to start design in 2022/23 and be built by 2025. But once we undertook feasibility work, we realised that build costs have escalated significantly, and the day-to-day operating costs of this centre would add approximately 1 percent to rates. We think it is prudent to relook at how best we can cost effectively deliver the community facilities that the Tūrangi community needs.

In the meantime, the Tūrangi community has told us that they’re not happy with the state of their town centre. While Council doesn’t own the majority of those buildings, we can work with land owners and business owners to come up with a structure plan to get the town centre functioning better. We think it would be a bad idea to spend a lot of ratepayer money and build a new recreation facility without considering the wider town centre first. The Tūrangi town centre structure planning exercise will help figure out what recreation facilities might be needed and where best to place them.

In recognition that we expect there will need to be an investment in new facilities, and to keep options open, we have included an indicative budget of approximately $17.5 million in years 4 and 5 of this plan. We’ve also thought about how a new facility would operate and who might run it. Our assumption in this Long-term Plan is that this will be a community hub, and therefore it needs to be community-led. In addition, ongoing building maintenance would cost ratepayers around $260,000 per year, or 0.2 percent on your rates. Who should operate the recreation facility, and how, is something we will consult the community on before we begin designing it.

The funding approach has also changed slightly to reduce the impact on rates. Rather than the project being 100 percent rates funded, we are now proposing that we will try to fund approximately 20 percent of the cost from outside Council.