Hi Rick, thank you for your email last week and thank you for acknowledging Rick and I regarding Te Okoroa Drive. It’s good to see progress being made on the shared pathway but it would also be good to see Te Okoroa Drive completed.
With regards to Papamoa Beach Road, while we appreciate your efforts, and we remain ever hopeful that it will be upgraded, I have my doubts though that this will be forthcoming particularly in light of all the assurances we have had from various councillors and council staff over many years. Also, while the council has been focussed on improving roads and facilities within Mount Maunganui and central Tauranga, the money for PBR improvements is simply not being made available despite Papamoa Residents paying high rates and not enjoying the improvements elsewhere in the city. I think it’s time we were told either start dates to the road improvements or don’t say anything at all, and not leave the residents hoping that those improvements may occur over the next 10, 20 or whatever years. If I was to be cynical, those residents who have been pushing for improvements will be in a rest home somewhere else other than Papamoa and won’t remember anything about PBR!
Regards John Middleton
On Thu, 17 Oct 2024 at 6:54 PM, Councillor Morris <Steve.Morris@tauranga.govt.nz> wrote:
Hi Rick and Beach Road team. It was great to catch up a fortnight ago, and Rick did some strong advocacy with the Mayor on Monday night at the PRRA about how Beach Road hasn’t kept up with growth.
Annual Plan
In terms of timeframes, we’ve got our first workshop on the annual plan Wednesday next week where we’ll be discussing some of those challenges Mahé referred to, not the least being the $85m deficit this year, $102m next year, and $60m the year after that the Commission kindly left us. After that we’ll be in the formal consultation phase around April-May next year with decisions in June.
Beach Road
So, now’s the time to think about flooding council with submissions at that time and getting media around the issue. Rick, I know at the meeting at the library you sounded discouraged about progress but I’ve got to remind you that the work you and John did was critical in getting the Council of the day to bring forward the connection of Te Okuroa Drive five years. Leanne Brown and I were able to latch on to it and argue the point with our councillor colleagues. While we can’t do the 18km all at once, a staged approach over ten years might find favour.
Shared Path
Below and attached is an update on the shared pathway along Beach Road. There is no budget for stage 2 down to Taylor reserve so that’s a good opportunity to add it to a submission.
Let’s keep in touch and if you need any media contacts, let me know. The local 1News reported introduced himself to me this afternoon.
Steve Morris | Pāpāmoa Councillor
Tauranga City Council | 021 0900 1817 |
steve.morris@tauranga.govt.nz | www.tauranga.govt.nz
Subject: FW: [Ops] Papamoa Beach Rd - 3 x Requests
Good afternoon Steve
Please see the response re the Papamoa Shared Pathway as requested.
The original scope for the Papamoa Shared Path linked the Pāpāmoa Domain to Taylor Reserve (3.8km long). Once this design was costed there wasn’t enough budget to construct the whole scope. The community were advised during consultation that “due to funding limitations, the path was proposed to be built in stages, with Stage 1 (Pāpāmoa Domain to Parton Road) to be constructed in 2023 and Stage 2 (Parton Road to Taylor Reserve) to be constructed in the next few years”.Results from community engagement (available here) indicated that there was a lot of support (52 submissions) for extending the path well beyond the scope of the project – to both the Mount and to Te Tumu/Te Puke.We applied for and received resource consent for Stages 1&2 of the project.At this stage there is no budget in future years to complete design and construction of Stage 2 (approx. 900m long) of the shared path from either Spaces and Places or from Transport.There is a great opportunity to extend the off-road shared path within the Pāpāmoa Coastal Reserve further north towards Mt Maunganui from Pāpāmoa Domain to Evans Road or Logan Road as a Stage 3 at a length of 2.7 km.It is estimated that it will cost approximately $1.5 million per kilometre for design and construction for a 3.5m wide basic concrete path with short timber sections in board walk for areas under trees. Any sections of boardwalk that are required for sections within the dunes area, or where the landform is steep will cost considerably more per lineal metre.
Thanks
Monique