Severn St wall: dearer option mooted
THE Waitaki District Council has changed course and will investigate a more expensive solution for Oamaru’s damaged historic terraced wall on State Highway 1 at the southern entrance to town.
Last week, the council disregarded an assets committee recommendation from earlier this month and the 80yearold Severn St wall will be fully rebuilt, despite the estimated costs for the work being about $300,000 more than budgeted for in the annual plan approved at the same meeting.
When the council set its rates on June 21 — increasing its rates take by about 1% over last year — it approved its 201718 annual plan, setting aside $200,000 to ‘‘address issues’’ with the wall because a recently rebuilt section failed after heavy rain last year.
On June 7, the council’s assets committee, faced with an estimated $500,000 rebuild of the wall, opted instead for a roughly $150,000 plan to ‘‘mitigate’’ the damage to the wall, which occurred mere months after $45,000 in improvements were made to it last year.
However, at the June 21 council meeting, Waitaki Mayor Gary Kircher said he had received ‘‘quite a lot of feedback’’ since the decision.
He then suggested a loanfunded ‘‘proper rebuild of a retaining wall’’, which found favour with the other councillors.
After the meeting, he said while the council did not like spending ‘‘a whole lot of money’’, the wall was an ‘‘iconic piece of architecture’’ in the historic town.
‘‘I for one didn’t want to be the mayor who basically downgraded that wall,’’ Mr Kircher said. ‘‘I just couldn’t see how it was going to look as good.’’
And a loan repaid over 15 or 20 years would cost ratepayers just a few dollars a year, he said.
At the assets committee meeting, first term councillor Jeremy Holding, who does not sit on the committee, was the only councillor to voice his concern with the plan that would have reduced the threetier wall to one tier in places — at the time, he called the Severn St wall ‘‘an Oamaru landmark that I would like to see preserved’’.
After last week’s meeting, he said he was pleased the council had decided to investigate loanfunding a full rebuild of the wall.
‘‘We could have gone ahead with the cheaper remodelling, but . . . I wasn’t comfortable that the community would have been happy with the final outcome.
‘‘The triple stone terraces are a distinct Oamaru landmark with heritage significance so I’m really glad to see the change in direction towards having it restored.’’
At the meeting, several councillors spoke about the feedback they had received in the two weeks between the two decisions and Cr Bill Kingan said while the issue had not received much attention during the earlier annual plan consultation, ‘‘we really do want to get it right’’.
Council chief financial officer Paul Hope told councillors at the meeting the council could use the $200,000 budgeted for the wall’s repair in this year’s annual plan as a placeholder while the council determined the true cost of renewing the wall, and how it would pay for it.
The plan approved last week included: $400,000 for a new link road at the North Oamaru Business Park; $300,000 for the current Arun and Tyne Sts intersection to be closed and the road realigned in line with Waterfront Rd; $215,000 for harbour redevelopment, including an urban park at the farmers market site at Tyne and Wansbeck Sts; and $450,000 to finalise the Alps 2 Ocean Cycle Trail.
It included six new projects not in the draft plan that came about through public consultation: turf replacement at Centennial Park ($36,000 from rates); the Phoenix Mill Restoration Trust ($10,000 from reserves); Papakaio Cemetery Trust ($3000 from rates); North Otago Sustainable Land Management biodiversity partnership ($10,000 from reserves); and Moeraki Millennium Walkway Weed Control ($5000 from rates).