Tarata residents seeking answers on road upkeep
Just how the New Plymouth District Council uses an almost decade-old multi-million-dollar road improvement fund is expected to be a hot topic at a public meeting at Tarata tonight.
While the official line from the council is that the meeting is to discuss the progress of the Junction Rd endowment fund, a leading Tarata figure expects the topic to quickly switch to ongoing road maintenance, which remains under pressure from increased logging trucks in the area.
Community leader Bryan Hocken said residents wanted to know first and foremost about plans for the ongoing maintenance of Tarata Rd, which should in part come out of the $8m fund, which was set up in 2014 from the sale of the council’s Junction Rd leases in the former Inglewood County area.
The conditions of the endowment on the leasehold properties meant the funds could only be used for maintenance and improvement works on Junction Rd (now Tarata Rd), and other roads located within the former Taranaki and Inglewood counties, excluding Inglewood itself.
Hocken said the community wanted answers about future funding.
‘‘The problem is the logging trucks are wrecking the roads and creating craters.’’
He was concerned about the safety of road users, especially school buses, that used the road, which stretches from Purangi to Inglewood.
While logging truck movements have been commonplace for residents in the area, Hocken said there were widespread concerns about the volume ramping up along the winding and narrow stretch of road.
The council was in the process of widening and strengthening Tarata Rd near the entrance of Inglewood, but it only covered a short distance , he said.
‘‘We just want answers about what is going to happen,’’ Hocken said.
‘‘It feels like it’s in the too-hard basket, but we know it’s not easy.’’
The damage logging trucks are doing to rural roads has been a common theme in Taranaki in recent years, with Stratford District Council introducing a targeted rate to ensure that forestry owners foot the bill for the damage done to the district’s roads.
The differentiated rate is expected to increase from its original projection of $100,000 as more properties that are being harvested are found.
NZ Forestry’s Taranaki regional director Cam Eyre said he was not aware of the Tarata meeting and could not comment apart from emphasising that road maintenance was a vital safety aspect for all road users.
‘‘The New Plymouth District Council has to provide a safe road, just as we have to provide a safe road in the forest,’’ he said.
Eyre said councils had to factor in the length of time they collected rates while the industry was not using the roads around growing forestry blocks.
He also believed that councils were given more than adequate time to plan road maintenance in areas where blocks were now being harvested.
‘‘The problem is the logging trucks are wrecking the roads and creating craters.’’ Bryan Hocken