An artist’s impression of what Kingaroy’s upgraded CBD might look like at night … but some planned features may not be installed after Councillors voted against tipping any more money into the project (Graphic: SBRC)

December 6, 2022

Some features originally planned for the Kingaroy Transformation Project (KTP) will be reduced or not installed at all when work ends early next year.

At November’s General Meeting, Councillors met in a closed session to hear a report on the KTP’s progress and consider a request to allocate an extra $80,000 to $260,000 to its budget.

The project was originally expected to cost about $8 million when it was first proposed in mid-2017.

But by the time work began in January 2021, its budget had expanded to $13.6 million.

This money came from $4.5 million contributed by the Federal Government’s Building Better Regions Fund; a $2 million loan the Council had secured for the project; and $7.1 million from Council funds that had been set aside to upgrade the town’s ageing underground infrastructure.

During the past two years, however, the project has been hit by a range of external problems that have increased costs.

These included the COVID pandemic and the supply headaches it caused; five separate extreme weather events over the past year; and CPI increases of between 12 and 25.7 per cent.

These hurdles have caused the KTP’s budget to balloon to $17.6 million.

In closed discussions at November’s meeting, staff presented a range of options to complete some or all of the remaining portions of the project.

These options ranged from $80,000 to $260,000, which staff suggested could be drawn from the Council’s 2023-24 depreciation allocation.

After the closed session ended, Councillors returned to an open meeting to vote on the issue.

Cr Gavin Jones moved that Council approve the extra funding, and this was seconded by Cr Danita Potter.

However, other Councillors disagreed.

And when the question was put to a vote, the motion was lost 4-3, with Crs Schumacher, Erkens, Duff and Mayor Otto voting against tipping any further funding into the project.

More details about what remaining KTP features will be axed or reduced are expected to be known when Council staff prepare the project’s final scoping statement later this month.

Related articles:

  ,

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.