GROWING COSTS OF STOKE CENTRE
The overspend on the Stoke Greenmeadows project accounts for almost half of all Nelson City Council’s infrastructure overspending for the past five years.
The beleaguered project has run past its original budget by more than $1 million, while the city’s 15 other projects over the past five years that either ran over time or over budget totalled $2.6 million.
The initial budget for the Stoke project was set at $6.15m in 2015.
In August 2016, this funding was increased by $350,000.
That increase was to pay for partitioning, heating and to engage the preferred tenderer.
The winning tender, from Watts and Hughes, was for $4.6m.
This amount covered the construction price only, with the $1.5m difference between the tender and the budget going on the architect’s costs, resource consents and other professional fees.
One year later, in August 2017, another budget increase was approved. This rise of $114,000 covered work on a commercial kitchen added to the centre. It also increased the site’s generator capacity, for Civil Defence purposes.
Finally, in March this year, the council approved a further $590,000 ‘‘to complete the project’’. In total, the project’s budget increased by just over $1m in just over one year.
Many of the decisions made about the project and its budgeting occurred in public-excluded council sessions – usually for commercial sensitivity or privacy reasons.
The project was originally meant to be completed by November last year, then revised to February this year after the August 2017 adjustments. Now the full Greenmeadows complex will not be available until August of this year.
Stoke Rugby players began using the site’s changing rooms in April this year. Now its clubrooms are also available, following a dawn blessing on June 23.