Playgrounds on chopping block

Future showpiece playgrounds could get the flick as financial pressure comes on for Hamilton City Council.

The city has seven destination playgrounds – including at Nawton’s Dominion Park and Hamilton Lake Domain – and the plan was to reach 15 before 2029.

But money will be tight when councillors debate the long-term plan mid-October and they’re eyeing a shift to smaller, neighbourhood play areas.

Councillors were presented with four options at a briefing – from spending an extra $3.15 million to get five more destination playgrounds to just looking after existing playgrounds.

An option somewhere in the middle – stopping destination playgrounds but upgrading neighbourhood ones – was the idea councillors wanted more information on.

When it was last discussed, all councillors present saw it as the best choice, Mayor Andrew King said.

‘‘The discussion around this table on that day was that we wouldn’t proceed with destination playgrounds any further, we would go for neighbourhood playgrounds – on that particular day, on the mix of councillors who were here on that day.’’

Destination playgrounds cost around $1.1m, Cr Geoff Taylor said, before asking how the price of a new neighbourhood one would compare.

It could range from $150,000 to $200,000, staff said.

‘‘I don’t want any more destination playgrounds, myself,’’ Taylor said.

At the opposite end of the scale was Cr Angela O’Leary, who was all for a continued rollout of the Playgrounds of the Future plan.

That plan was a way of saying ‘‘We’re not going to do the skody old swing, slide, see-saw, threepiece set any more,’’ O’Leary said.

Sticking with the plan, Hamilton would get five mid-size destination playgrounds and toilets over the next decade. Four neighbourhood playgrounds would get an upgrade as well, and there would be one new neighbourhood playground.

To pay for that, council would need to fund an extra $3.15m on top of the $3.43m committed in the previous long-term plan.

The final option was for council to do nothing – that is, not to put any money into new playgrounds or upgrades.

Staff will report back to councillors with more information as part of the long-term plan process, for which formal meetings and deliberations are expected to start mid-October.