Councillors voted 9-6 yesterday to include the unfunded "Peninsula Connection" project in the Dunedin City Council’s draft nine-year plan ahead of upcoming consultation.
The roading improvements between Portobello and Harington Point would take place in years two, three and four of the plan, and are not eligible for NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi co-funding.
Cr Garey said the project was not a cycleway project, but a roading improvement project — the shared path at the start of the project in Portobello Rd was an "add-on".
She said NZTA would not fund the sections of road because their criteria did not include things such as tourism, which the road provided access for. Staff had worked "really hard" to look for alternative sources of funding and none other than council debt funding was available.
Thanks to the work of council staff, she said, it was no longer necessarily a $24m proposition, but there was an $18.5m option if the path went to the landward side of Portobello School.
"The community is looking for clarity of commitment ... it's a priority for the community, it's a priority for the city.
"This is about investing in the city, in a whole of city amenity. It's about addressing safety and risk, it's about finishing what we've started.
"Most of all, a promise was made to the community and to mana whenua."
A staff report to councillors said the 700m from Ellison Rd to the Ōtākou Fisheries Wharf was estimated to cost $8m.
The 3.6km from Tidewater Dr to Ellison Rd would cost $6.9m and the 2km from Portobello to Weir Rd, $3.6m if the route was landward of the school, or $9.6m if the route took the seaward side.
Cr David Benson-Pope called the project "one of the most significant developments that's happened in Dunedin for decades" and would remain "one of the gems of what we have in terms of our infrastructure".
Cr Jim O’Malley said the work would last for 50 to 75 years and would complete the job the council had started.
"The actual population demographic decisions you would make in infrastructure would actually stop everything at Portobello and that's actually why everything generally does stop at Portobello.
"The decision to carry on past and go around to Ōtākou is in fact a product of our treaty relationships and obligations to the area."
Cr Lee Vandervis said the peninsula was over-represented on the council and "vastly over-represented" in council spending at the expense of the rest of the greater Dunedin area.
"Our city has much higher safety priorities than this," Cr Vandervis said. "Our city has much higher debt priorities than this.
"Our city is not in a position to be throwing 20-million-odd dollars at a road project that is going to make no difference at all to the 300,000 tourists that bus in and out or drive in and out to the peninsula."
Cr Carmen Houlahan said the issues the area were facing were not unique to it and other projects were missing out.
"Twenty-two million dollars has been taken out of this budget for the cycle tunnels trust. They have also been waiting years and years and years.
"Seventeen million dollars has been taken out of these budgets for a professional theatre. They have also been waiting years and years and years.
"We need to look at the whole city and work out priorities, because right now we've got people missing out, and is it fair or reasonable?
"I think this needs to be done, but do we need to do it right now?"
Dunedin Mayor Jules Radich lost a bid (in a 9-4 vote with two abstentions) to push the project out to years two, five and eight of the long-term plan.
