Is it spelt with two ‘e’s and one ‘o’? Or is it spelt with one ‘e’ and two ‘o’s? It would be the latter – spelling ‘Devonport’ for one of our city’s main roads.

Two weeks ago, Tauranga worker Susie Martin noticed there was a misspelt sign reading ‘Devenport Rd’, as opposed to the correct ‘Devonport Rd’ at the 18th Ave and Devonport Rd intersection on her drive home from work.

“I did a double take,” says Susie. “You wonder how something like that get could get passed before they put it up.

“It’s a bit of a major spelling mistake…mistakes somewhere else aren’t so bad, but on a road sign or something printed like that is pretty bad.”

Naturally, The Sun reached out to Tauranga City Council to see what went wrong here and what their process is for checking signs before they are installed in our community.

“Our maintenance contractors check sign details before sending to a sign manufacturer for production,” says TCC transport director Brendan Bisley.  

“Signs are then checked by the maintenance contractor before they are erected on the network.”  

Brendan says in this instance, sign details were correct when sent to the sign manufacturer, with the error occurring during the manufacturing process. “Unfortunately, it appears the sign was not checked by the maintenance contractor before it was erected.”

Brendan says the ‘Devenport Rd’ sign was removed as soon as council were aware of the error last Wednesday. “A new sign will be manufactured and re-installed within a week.”

On her usual commute, Susie says “council have since corrected it”.

Curious whether these misprints are a common occurrence, The Sun asked how many TCC funded signs have been incorrectly printed in the last 12 months.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the only one,” says Brendan.

According to council, the cost of a street sign is $200 with an additional $150 installation fee. Brendan notes “as the error occurred during manufacturing there is no cost to council for the replacement sign”.