Long Term Community Plan 2012-2022 - Hurunui District Council

Hurunui Community Long Term Plan 2012 - 2022
Cheviot Library/Service Centre
We received a large number of submissions regarding moving the
Cheviot community library out of the Cheviot Area School and
into the Cheviot Service Centre on the main street of Cheviot.
Several of you were not in favour of this option, but many of
you did endorse this concept. We endorsed the Cheviot Ward
Committee’s recommendation that the library is moved. This
will enable the library and council services to be delivered from
the one site by one person. The school library will remain in its
current location.
The service centre has not had an upgrade for years and
therefore needs some alterations and refurbishment to create
a more vibrant community space. A working group comprising
of a mix of local Cheviot people has been selected to work on
the detail of the move and to create a new look for the service
centre / library to capture the unique essence of Cheviot and
provide a service to meet the needs of the locals. Detail such
as the opening hours, days of the week to be open, design of
the interior and exterior of the building, etc are to be worked
through. The timetable for the project will also need to be
worked through, but it is planned take place in the 2012/13 year.
$100,000 has been set aside for the building alterations which
will not incur an increase in rates.
Cheviot Medical Centre
We own four medical buildings in the District – in Hanmer
Springs, Rotherham, Waikari and Cheviot. We originally got
involved in this area years ago to help attract qualified medics
into the district to take up private practices without the
deterrent of capital cost, and provide health services that are
of a good quality, affordable and meet the needs of our rural
communities. This is an on-going challenge as attracting doctors
and nurses who are prepared to work and live in rural New
Zealand is an issue that Hurunui does not face alone. Times
have changed and the ideal of finding General Practitioners
wanting to set up practice in a rural community and stay for
life (and work alone) has become unsustainable. However
important considerations for future planning still include having
high quality medical facilities and a strong network of medical
practitioners and providers to support each other.
Whereas we do not recruit medical staff for the district, we
believe we do have a role to provide medical facilities and
assist in facilitating good outcomes. We regularly meet with
key providers of medical services for the District, including the
Canterbury Rural Primary Health Organisation, Canterbury
District Health Board and local practitioners, etc. These
discussions help us keep up with the issues our GPs and medical
centres are facing and helps us work together to find solutions.
One of the areas we are able to assist is building medical centres
that cater for current and future demand.
Three of our current medical centres are modern, while Cheviot
requires an upgrade or replacement in the near future. This
upgrade has been signalled by its inadequacy to deliver modern
health care into the future. We have allocated $1 million (to
be inflation adjusted) in year 2016/17 to build a new one. The
project will be funded by an internal loan and servicing of the
loan over 20 years is proposed that this be funded through the
Cheviot Medical Centre Rate which is charged to each property
in the Cheviot Ward. This will result in the Cheviot Medical
Centre Rate moving from approximately $30 per ratepayer
to $120 per ratepayer from 2016/17. Some submissions were
received on this topic and all supported improving the Cheviot
Medical Centre. There is still work to be done before a rebuild
or upgrade is undertaken to make sure this is good use of your
money. We will want to be confident that a new building is
needed as opposed to upgrading the current facility, and we also
need to be sure that this is what the community needs. Further
consultation will be done closer to the time before any work
is done.
Rotherham Public Toilet
We have purchased a section on the main road through
Rotherham adjacent to the new Amuri Medical Centre, for a
village green. The section is ideally suited to a public toilet for
motorists passing through Rotherham en-route to the Inland
Road. For motorists travelling to Kaikoura from the West
Coast, this would be the first public toilet since Springs Junction
(i.e. without detouring into remote sites such as Boyle River
or to Hanmer Springs). A toilet on this section will also be
useful for local residents using the village green for picnics or
recreation (playground) or on their way to or from the Health
Centre. This is a long term proposal as we intend building the
toilet in the 2017/18 year. Because it is a long way off and we are
not certain of the demand in this location, we will seek public
views on this proposal again when we review this long term
plan in 2015. In the meantime, $90,000 has been included in the
budget to be funded through the District Rate.
Hanmer Springs Facilities
1. Sports Ground
The Hanmer Springs Community Board intends to upgrade the
Hanmer Springs sports ground as it is out of date and will not
meet the needs for future growth and demand. Before doing
any work however, the Board will commission an engineer’s
report on the project to determine the extent of works that
can be carried out. They plan to commission this in 2012/13
to prepare for the physical works to be done in 2015/16. The
report will more accurately scope the project including whether
the project is staged over more than one year. The estimated
cost involved is $30,000 for the engineers report, and $1 million
for the actual development work.
The engineers report will cover the feasibility of including the
following facilities in the upgrade:
• A full basketball size court that can cater for
other indoor sports such as badminton, volleyball,
bowls, netball etc
• A ground floor kitchen facility able to cater for
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