Roads are amongst our most important assets and Council is proposing a one-off $1.7 million injection in its 2022-23 Annual Plan to catch up on maintenance in some areas.

The floods of May 2021 had a big impact on the district’s roading network and since then Council has been trying to repair damage and get back to its cyclic major repair programme.

Mayor Neil Brown said using $1.7m from forestry reserve would go a long way to repairing more roads and doing more maintenance, which would stop a cycle of temporary pothole repairs.

“We’ve heard very clearly that our community want roads to be a focus, so this funding would allow us to bring forward renewal of some key roads, which will help minimise future maintenance and the need to fill in the same potholes over and over.”

He said the forestry reserve currently had a balance of $5.1m, which had built up over time from the sale of forestry and some forestry land.

“While it is unusual to allocate forestry reserve money to bring forward the major repair programme for our roading network, we felt the time is right to dip into this fund for this purpose. The forestry reserve will be left with a balance of $3.4 million.”

As part of its Annual Plan consultation, Council is asking residents what they think of using the forestry reserve to boost roading.

Mayor Brown said Council was also asking if residents would be prepared to accept a lower level of day-to-day services if they wanted to reduce rates.

“While record inflation and things outside of our control have affected this coming budget, reducing the level of services could lower rates. But we want to know where people see that happening as we have already trimmed this budget as much as we can, and put off a couple of capital projects.”

Council says some critical work must be completed as scheduled, including upgrades to water infrastructure in Methven, Mt Somers and Rakaia.

Mayor Brown said a further complication is the impact of rating revaluations completed in 2021, which reflect significant increases in urban property values compared to rural property values.

“Despite the common misconception, a growth in property prices doesn’t mean the Council collects more rates, but it does affect how the rates are distributed amongst individual properties.”

The draft Annual Plan shows Council aims to collect $44.264m in rates and its operating expenses for the 2022-23 year will be $70.6m. The difference is made up of targeted rates and other fees and charges, and returns on its investments.