Dumb and dumber…

The dumb – the questions posed to the Councillors from the Councillors opposed to the stadium development over issues surrounding the stadium. {Thanks to Anne for clarifying this}

The Dumber – Fliss Butcher’s answers.

So here’s their questions, and for arguments sake, here are my answers.

Question 1. The Carisbrook Stadium Trust has promoted the stadium as a well-equipped, multi-purpose venue with a minimum of 20,000 permanent seats, and a maximum capacity of about 30,000, – but what are we really getting? Single-use venue / Multi-use venue

Crikey, what can you do with this, if this is the starting point (it gets better, hold the laughter till the end please). Yes it’s a multi-purpose stadium. It is being built as a multi-purpose stadium, you know with seating that can be moved and configured for multiple uses. Otherwise the design would be vastly different and the seating fixed. But then this is a moot point, as the designers and developers have designed it as a multi-use stadium, just because the StS doubt’s this, does not mean it’s not. 3 years from now when it’s finished and just 1 event (I’ll book it myself) outside of rugby is held, then it’s a multi-use stadium. However to be really pedantic, until there hasn’t been a single other event outside of Rugby, there is no way to disprove the multi-use nature of the stadium.

Question 2. Is it […] misleading to represent the facility as being multi-purpose when clearly only rugby is catered for within the current budget?
Yes / No

As discussed previously, this does not mean that other sports won’t be joining up. These people are demanding black and white answers to things which evolve over time.

Question 3. And will […] making it multi-purpose blow that budget?
Yes / No

Yes, no, maybe. But as the budget is fixed and the design is for multi-purpose, at this stage we’d have to say No. However to be realistic, some developments come in on budget, some have cost over-runs. Let’s assume a 10% over-run, then technically Yes.

Question 4. Is the stadium affordable? Yes / No

Yes

Question 5. In a time of recession is this socially acceptable? Yes / No

As this question by late October or November, and by then we will be out of this recession, so it’s a little to early to say. All major economic indicators, including the most recent by the BNZ on Friday, predict the economy to be showing growth again by November with forecast growth for next year back on track.

Question 6. Is the volume of borrowing prudent? Yes / No

Yes. Or would you have it that council reserves or other economic sources drained?

Question 7. [Do you expect to create] lost opportunity costs? Yes / No

I don’t even understand this question?

Question 8. Does a responsible local authority commit all available resources to one project, so no new major spending is possible into the foreseeable future? Yes / No

Who said all available resources are committed. Just last week the council funded a massive amount of money for the multi-purpose Hockey Turf resurfacing project. This is new money. Besides which, 1 major project every 20 years isn’t too little, it could be argued that a council this size could only conduct this level of project development every 20 years. So start planning for the next project off the rank and lets see if that’s viable. Or would you like the council to commit to several major projects at once, this would be over stretching.

Question 9. Will raising $75 million for the stadium from local businesses and other community funders have a negative impact on the social fabric of Dunedin? Yes / No

What do you mean by this? There seems to be too many assumptions made here.

Question 10. Can we afford to take that risk when few, if any major projects meet budget, when steel and concrete prices are escalating rapidly, and when our dollar is dropping? Yes / No

Stop being so bloody disingenuous. As far as I understand (as alerted to by the StS), the steel has been pre-purchased, so why include this here. The Dollar will always rise and fall, and if the steel is pre-purchased then this has been protected against. To assume that major projects don’t come in on budget, please take the time it took me (all of 2-3 minutes) to read the post I did about major Stadiums coming in on budget. Anne accuses me of being binary, black and white, seeing things as positive while labelling the StS negative. I could only assume then that using this (strange) criteria, that the StS is somewhat singular. They can only see negatives all the way, a very sad place to be.

Question 11. Is the prudent way forward for our city a reliance on a vastly expensive single project at the expense of everything else? Yes / No

You say everything else, others disagree.

Question 12. Final question: If the preceding questions cannot be answered confidently and satisfactorily, can we responsibly continue with the stadium project? Yes / No

Short answer YES

Full StS article and comments here.