2013-05-28-council-agenda - Taupo District Council

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. Work is underway with widening of the first site of three sections of Poihipi Road.
. The Hearing Committee's recommendations for the Southern Settlements Structure Plan will
be presented to Council in May.
There are a number of projects where there has been some slippage in terms of timing. These are
detailed in the following report, however of particular note are:
. Approval for changes in the concept plan and funding of the Waitahanui water treatment plant
upgrade has been delayed as trials are still to be concluded. These are critical to ensure an
ongoing level of operational expenditure that is affordable.
. Field trials for the Turangi wastewater treatment plant are still to be conducted to inform the
coming process improvements. The tests will be carried out by the operations team in May.
Performance measure targets set in the Long Term Plan have largely been achieved with 40 out of 46
targets met. The performance targets that we are unlikely to achieve are noted below with detailed
explanations included in the third quarter report.
. 100 per cent of food safety complaints responded to within 48 hours (6 out of 9);
. Service requests for water outages responded to within an hour and service restored within
four hours (10 out of 54 completed outside this timeframe);
. No wastewater overflows to lakes, rivers or streams (2 incidents of sewerage spill have
occurred - Matuku St on 25 December 2012 and Lake Terrace on 9 February 2013)
. Compliance with all resource consent conditions relating to wastewater (due to compliance
issues at Kinloch, Waitahanui and Turangi wastewater treatment plants on concentration of
nitrogen in discharged effluent);
. Wastewater service restored within 4 hours in Taupo, Turangi and Mangakino and 5 hours in
other areas (14 out of 66 call-outs had service restored outside the target timeframe).
. 100 per cent of official information requests are responded to within 20 working days (1
request out of 51 was not responded to within this timeframe).
Risks and financial challenges
Government reform continues to sit high on the agenda for our sector and Council. I nereare a raft of
work streams currently underway by the Government, however the coordination is not always clear.
There is a clear risk that reform pushed through by Government without due consideration could have
significant unintended consequences. We are looking to manage this risk through active engagement
in the Government's reform programme and by ensuring that our work programmes are agile enough
to be able to respond. A good example is the delay of our flood hazard plan changes due to the
Governments resource management reforms.
The Local Government Commission is also looking at proposals for reorganising local government in
the Hawkes Bay region. Although the area of our District that sits within the Hawkes Bay region is
relatively small, there is a clear association of these landowners with the Taupo community and its
services provided by Council. Furthermore, its removal from the Taupo District would result in a
detrimental reduction in rates collected. Advocacy on this front has already commenced and will
continue as the Commission proceeds through the process.
Rob Williams
Chief Executive