At a council meeting last Thursday, the motion to take the $189,115.53 overspend out of the $515,000 budget for the second stage was split seven-all and Clutha District Mayor Bryan Cadogan used his casting vote to reach the decision.
Had the motion failed, the other option was to take an additional loan to cover the over-expenditure.
The council originally approved a budget of $2.91million for the main street upgrade but the project was revealed to be about 6.5% over budget.
At the meeting, Clutha District Council senior infrastructure engineer Christian Bopp said despite being over budget, the variance was a good result for a project of its size.
Councillors were concerned how much taking the money out of the second-phase budget would affect what could be done in the upgrade.
Cr John Cochrane said the council should take out the loan and take advantage of the low interest rates.
"[We could] use the remaining money to finish off what we started and have the town looking finished," he said.
He said parts of the town still looked "shoddy".
Cr Geoff Blackmore agreed and said the over-expenditure belonged to stage one of the project and the $515,000 was intended to be for other work.
Cr Bruce Vollweiler was on the other side of the fence.
However, he denied trying to stop stage two of the project from being fully realised.
"We don’t need that money at the moment ... it’s sitting there."
He said the council would make a decision on what it needed to spend the money on for stage two in the future.
It was not yet clear if the full $515,000 would be needed.
"It might be more or less [than the budget]," Cr Vollweiler said.
Mr Bopp confirmed no formal plans had been made for the second phase of the street upgrade.
Once the council knew what it wanted to achieve in the second phase and what it might cost, it could then make adjustments to the budget in the future.
The council decided to take the $189,115 over-expenditure from the $515,000 for the second phase of the upgrade.
