Hawke’s Bay Regional Council and Transport Committee Chairman, Alan Dick, said that he supports the concerns expressed by the Hawke’s Bay Chamber of Commerce about the National Land Transport Programme released last week.
“What has effectively happened is that $72 M of regionally distributed fuel tax (‘R’ funds), originally intended to fund Hawke’s Bay transport projects, has been diverted away from our priorities to enable reallocation of the nationally collected fuel excise tax (‘N’ funds) to government priorities in Auckland and beyond,” he says.
“This is absolutely contrary to the original purposes of locally prioritised ‘R’ funding which has effectively been absorbed into general fuel taxes. Accordingly, it is a significant loss of local self-determination to Wellington-based bureaucrats and politicians who clearly think they know better than our local Hawke’s Bay decision makers.”
The Regional Transport Committee consists of senior representatives of the five Hawke’s Bay councils, community representatives including the Chamber of Commerce delegate representing Economic Development objectives and includes a representative of the NZ Transport Agency itself. |