The construction of the Bulls Community Centre has presented additional costs of $2 million. Photo / Lucy Drake
The construction of the Bulls Community Centre has presented additional costs of $2 million. Photo / Lucy Drake
The new Bulls Community Centre has come in a whopping $2 million over budget - and ratepayers will have to pay for it.
The Rangitikei District Council says an extra $2,044,913 has been approved to fund the centre after a revised budget was presented at its meeting on February 27.The council was told that the construction cost was close to the initial budget but professional fees, building consent, furniture and fit-out costs had not been included, meaning the cost ballooned to a forecast $8,242,113.
Rangitikei mayor Andy Watson said the council, like other councils, tended to focus on capital build costs rather than full project costs.
"Personally that's probably not the way that council fully understood it but it is a reasonably normal council process," Watson said.
"We put out a budget around council build costs that can be capitalised by loans and we are within cooee of those budgets."
Watson said after new chief executive Peter Beggs was appointed in October last year, the council became aware of some minor building issues and potential costs that were not directly related to the building.
Days after starting the role, Beggs requested a review of the new centre and halted construction so he could be briefed on all aspects of the project.
After his review, the revised budget indicated a number of on-site issues that arose within the development stage.
Watson said the council was not aware it would need an alternative water system for firefighting, meaning it needed to buy a large water tank and pumping station to provide necessary firefighting requirements.
Power within the area was not sufficient for the development and a power transformer was installed to ensure there was adequate power capacity.
Watson said a larger area of land was required on site to ensure carparking and bus lanes were safe and appropriate, again adding to the cost.
He said the council budgeted only for building costs because it allowed for discussions on what could be funded by long-term loan.
"Talking to other councils, some people have said we probably needed to have been more transparent than what we actually had been, but the attitude is that council need to fully understand, we need to be honest from this process and we need to learn the lessons.
"There have been a whole variety of lessons that we needed to learn to regain community confidence."
Rangitikei district councillor Brian Carter said when the council was presented with the revised budget he was shocked to begin with but then it was explained how it got to the current situation.
"Initially I was annoyed but rather than compromising the build and getting an inferior product at the end, it's a matter of just carrying on and getting it done," Carter said.
Rangitikei District Mayor Andy Watson (left) and chief executive Peter Beggs will be at a public meeting on Thursday evening to address any community questions. Photo / Bevan Conley
Bulls resident and former councillor Graeme Platt was not impressed with the council's budget blowout announcement.
Platt, who stepped down as a councillor after the 2016-19 term, has opposed the idea of the new centre from the drawing-board days.
"A lot of people asked me to go back to try to stop this building. That was the main reason I went back and I tried for three years to put all sorts of cases up that the town didn't want it and it could never be justified and I failed."
Platt said he believed all aspects of the new centre will either lose revenue or go unused and will not benefit ratepayers, deeming it unjustifiable to build.
Platt has also lodged a complaint with the Auditor-General and the Ombudsman over the potential sale of Haylock Park in Bulls to fund the new centre.
Bruce Dear, a Bulls resident and strong opponent of the sale of Haylock Park, is shocked by the revised budget.
"If an individual or company was budgeting for a new retail development, all the requirements needed to the opening stage would be included before commencement to ensure that funds were available."
He said the amount being spent would have had the existing Town Hall brought up to earthquake-proof standards instead of building a new one and would have left money spare.
Watson will front up to a public meeting at 6pm on Thursday, March 12, in the Bulls Town Hall to answer questions from the public about the project.
"We are going to take the community through how we pick up the slack and the lessons we've learnt."
Beggs will also be at the meeting to answer any technical questions.
Watson said they would try to be as transparent as possible.
So far $115,000 has been raised from initial pledges with a number still coming in. With the Walton Street community house sale, provisionally $237,000, the funding has doubled from what the community committed to raising.
Watson said he was disappointed an application for funding, which he expected to be around $1 million, was declined by the Government's Provincial Growth Fund.
Other external funding for the project has been secured from NZ Lottery Grant Boards, regional and local trusts, and local community funding.
The construction completion date is expected to be in April with the centre to be open to the public in July-August 2020.
