AT TUESDAY night’s Tamworth Council meeting Councillors agreed to allocate $850,000 from the Westdale Land Reserve to provide additional funding for the Jewry Street Extension project, a heavy vehicle bypass from Taminda to the Tamworth Global Gateway Park.
The funding for the project initially included $5.886 million from the NSW Government’s Growing Local Economies program and $654,000 from council’s Civil Construction Reserve.
A report to council explained the Jewry Street Extension was completed in excess of the original $6.54 million budget due to a range of factors, including an 18-month delay while complex flood modelling and landowner negotiations were completed, global supply chain issues and increased material costs which could not have been forecast at the time of the funding application in 2018.
The money will be repaid to the reserve through the sale of land at the Tamworth Global Gateway Park and the report said all Global Gateway Park land sales are returned to the Westdale Land Reserve and as at 31 December 2023 there was $11,361,229 owing to the reserve.
Currently about $5 million of land sale revenue has been deposited into the reserve, an additional $6.7 million of land sales are under contract and awaiting settlement and about $9.6 million of land is available for sale