Cycleways, footpaths lose out to sewage spills in harbour

Rosemary Roberts | 26th June 2009

More than 300 requests for cycleways and footpaths in submissions to the Whangarei District Council's draft 10-year plan for the district have failed to deter the council from sticking to an allocation of $4 million for footpaths and walkways over the entire life of the plan.

The sum was divided into $1.7 million for cycleways - an average of $170,000 a year - and $2.3 million for footpaths.

The council also allocated $1000 a year for mountain bike tracks.

The council approved the district's Long-Term Council Community Plan  for 2009-19 earlier this week, following a month-long public consultation process involving 1332 submissions. This was a third more than for the previous  plan in 2006.

At the meeting where council approved the plan, Cr Sheryl Mai asked why the council was confirming the amount in the draft for cycleways "despite huge numbers of submitters", and when council would have been able to access some subsidy funding for cycleway and walkway projects.

"The number of submissions for these facilities was by far the largest for any issue [319] and I think we have disappointed a lot of people by not investing further in these measures," she said.

Finance chairman Warwick Syers said the council had made some hard decisions and stuck to them to contain costs.

After the meeting, council CEO Mark Simpson acknowledged that the provision of walkways and cycleways was the most popular issue in submissions and "clearly important to a large part of our community", but he suggested submitters would be pleased with the amount allocated.

Financial constraints  meant that priorities had been hotly debated, many times.

 Some submitters had not been able to have their ideas incorporated in the plan, while others would be pleased with the obvious difference their submissions had made to the overall result.

He said that, when the draft was being prepared, the  No1 issue  looked to be sewage contamination of the harbour during storm events.

While cycle and walkways had proved to be the most popular issue, the number of submissions on the sewerage system had left councillors in no doubt that action needed to be taken - hence the decision to double the financial commitment to improvements.

The council would now spend another $9 million in years two to six of the plan, on top of the $4 million  proposed  for year one.