QLDC Transportation and Planning manager Denis Mander said the council apparently entered into an agreement with Remarkables Park Ltd (RPL) and the Queenstown Airport Corporation (QAC) in November 2000, regarding cost sharing for the construction of a roundabout at the intersection of State Highway 6 and Lucas Pl in Frankton.
The agreement, which is still in effect, provided the cost of the formation of the roundabout was not to be funding by the former Transit New Zealand - now New Zealand Transport Agency - but to be met equally by the three other parties.
Mr Mander said the roundabout costs were "not communicated to council" and no provision had been made for the council's portion of the costs in its annual plan.
Further, no-one at yesterday's meeting knew anything about the agreement, nor who signed it.
QLDC Engineering Services general manager Mark Kunath said the first he knew about it was when the invoice arrived.
"The agreement was signed in 2000 - none of us were here then and even when we were going through the negotiations with RPL through the configuration [of the roundabout] . . . we had no knowledge whatsoever that we would be paying some of the balance.
"We treated it differently than if we were going to be sharing some of the costs. We received the invoice a year and a-half after it was built.
"It came as a bit of a surprise. Certainly, we would do things quite differently now."
Cr Cath Gilmour said the situation sounded "shonky" and could not understand why no-one knew about it.
"Someone must have signed the agreement, so how could you say you had no knowledge of it? It suggests fundamental flaws in our processes . . . that the information doesn't get passed along."
Mr Kunath said he could not recall who signed the agreement, but he did have the document.
Cr Vanessa van Uden said she suspected it "would have been the mayor at the time".
Cr John Mann said the situation seemed "completely incredible".
Mr Kunath said it had taken a year to bring the invoice to the committee's attention because "we didn't know that we had any spare money to allocate to the project".
"We've done a review of our expenditure [and] we have set aside money in the next year's CCP for this payment."
The money could come from the "property purchase (local roads)" in the council's general ledger, set aside for design work and purchase of land for the Inner Links Project and Frankton Flats arterials.
Mr Mander said the invoice and supporting information had been reviewed by WT Partnerships and MacTodd "in terms of the veracity of the costs and legal commitments". Both had stated the invoice was "in order". However, QAC was also seeking to have it reviewed.
"We're going to wait for what QAC find out, but as it stands, they've got the same legal advisers as us and ours [are saying] . . . pay it."
Cr Lyal Cocks said the invoice did not "stack up".
"I'm just a little bit amazed that it's such a big surprise to two big organisations running two different management structures."
Cr van Uden said it should not have taken a year to find a way to fund the payment. There was a "question mark" in her mind over seeing it for the first time a year after it had been received.
She also took issue with the item being listed as "not significant in terms of the council's significance policy".
The meeting was adjourned for 15 minutes for Cr Mann, who is chairman of the committee, to seek advice on how to proceed. Following the adjournment, Mr Mander said the committee needed to prepare a report so the full council could analyse its significance. It will be presented at this month's council meeting.
