### ODT Online Sun, 13 Oct 2013
ORC’s share of stadium almost paid
By Dan Hutchinson
The Otago Regional Council is on track to repay its share of the Forsyth Barr Stadium construction costs in less than half the time it originally expected.
The council committed $37.5 million towards the stadium, some of the funds coming from special Port Otago dividends and the rest from residents paying targeted rates from July 1, 2009.
ā ORC takes $2.8 million a year from ratepayers for the stadium — that equates to $32 on the rates bill for an average-price Dunedin property ($270,000).
ā DCC ratepayers will be paying stadium rates for about another 18 years.
Yesterday Mr Scott confirmed that the next financial year would be the last that people would have to pay the full stadium rate, with only $1 million left to pay in the 2015-16 year. He said the council thought at one stage it could make next year the last year for payments but a slight upward shift in interest rates delayed that.
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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr
What if? Dunedin... 
Don’t forget that the ORC differentially rates for the stadium, it charges Dunedin ratepayers a higher stadium rate than the rest of Otago, even though we’re already paying $400/year to the DCC.
And more importantly, a slight increase in interest rates…..
The Dunedin ratepayers are not prepared for the hiatus of real increases in interest rates.
Please note ex- council nominee, now terrified ratepayer!
Yes, I read “slight upward shift in interest rates” too and thought that was nice of the Oddity to play it down. That’s the stuff of nightmares that people [have] written about here. So who were they writing that for? Surely not the struggling ratepayers who still buy their bloody paper above all their other essential costs of living. Most of which are been constantly knocked up week to week. Many of whom would likely suffer shit-in-your-pants trauma if anything in their life resulted in a slight shift involving another year of interest payments. The only slight going on around here are those conjured up the greedy GOBs and their willing followers in positions of influence.
I note that the Stadium website is currently advertising an upcoming performance by an ABBA tribute band. This band has been to Dunedin before, more than once. I went to one of their shows, in the REGENT THEATRE ! Yet another example of trying to lift the financial profile of the stadium at the expense of another publicly owned venue in the city. Despite the Regent Theatre being designed specifically for these events and the stadium being designed specifically NOT for these events, how much money will the Regent Theatre be losing as a result ? It seems like it is going to be easier just to shut down the Town Hall, Regent Theatre and Edgar Centre and send everything to the Stadium. That’s the way it’s heading.
Phil, also went to this show in the Regent which is perfectly designed and equipped for such shows.
But when the foxes are running the henhouse, what can you expect?
You know if they have to cancel the lingerie gridiron because of “injury”, and the best they can advertise for the upcoming year is an ABBA tribute band you know they’re not really trying any more ….
Mike, nothing will make the stadium work either as an attractor or money-spinner. Yet Darren still keeps creaming his pay along with his little team of manager elves. There’s some audacity to that. Meanwhile, Liability Cull and his brigade of Lessers is unlikely to have the balls to shut the stadium doors, because Dunedin City Council’s financial drain on ratepayers and residents matters not one cent — not while the orchestra plays and the fat lady sings (although we couldn’t book her either).
maybe it’s time to tie Burden’s salary to DVML’s performance ….
Can someone ask Rob Hamlin if the posts are still up at Carisbrook?
Maybe the new Planning & regulatory Benson-Pope will come up with a plan to make the stadium pay.
What’s that about straws and clutching, Calvin?
No they are not BillyBob, and nobody is more pleased than me to see the place finally annihilated as a professional rugby stadium and as a further related financial risk to this community.
We are left with mystery as to why the council maintained this supposedly surplus and supposedly doomed facility in pro-rugby ready condition for two years plus at a cost of several hundred thousand further dollars of ratepayersā money. It is highly unlikely that we will ever have a rational or honest answer to that one.
One of the problems with committing fully to a campaign against things like this is that if you succeed in achieving your objective, then one is always labeled as an idiot by other idiots because, apparently, ānothing was going to happen anywayā. If, in March 1936, when Hitler occupied the Rhineland the French had gone in and stamped the then puny and embryonic Wehrmacht flat, as they were entirely entitled to do under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles that had ended WWI, itās very likely that WWII and 50 million dead would never have happened.
But that is not of course how the French president responsible would have been remembered. He would have gone down in history as the: ābrutal destroyer of the wonderful Mr. Hitler, a man of the people who had just started to give the Germans a new hope. ..blah, blah, blah.ā I can see the websites now.
There is no political mileage in fully committing to opposing things as any professional politician from the leadership of France back then to our unlovable leaders now well know. Cowardice, dressed up as gravitas, has always been the safe political course for a pro. My decision to go in hard against the mummified Carisbrook was deliberately made in the full knowledge that I was not going to personally win either way that events it turned out.
Had we succeeded in stopping the Forsyth Barr Stadium people like you would right now be telling us how we had crushed a group of great visionaries, rejected their āgiftā and thereby cost this City a totally privately-funded stadium that would have been filled to capacity with money-toting out-of-towners twice a week all year round. This is what was required to deliver the projected twenty-odd million dollars plus annual profit that supported the ridiculous vapourings made at the time by the promoters of the thing. Cold hard commercial reality would not have been available as an antidote to such preposterous projections and reflections as it regrettably now is ā in spades.
After the recent undirected and foul-mouthed outburst by the āownerā of this site I decided to contribute no more to it. However, as an individual who is neither a coward nor a politician I simply cannot abide the thought that you may go away with the thought that I am in any way retreating from either you or my positions on this matter. So on this one occasion you will get a direct answer to your question. The goal posts are indeed no longer up at Carisbrook ā Thank God (or Paul Orders?)
New ownership, no team change.
Rob; we need you. “Come back to the Buildings” (apologies to the late Prof Jimmy Edwards), it needs your sagacious reasoning now more than ever. We are seeing right now the ‘strutting’ of our newly re-elected Mayor Dave Cull, complete with his newly endowed powers. Already he has kicked into touch Lee Vandervis and in doing so served notice that he is to be obeyed. New girl Hilary Calvert has put her stake in the ground as saying “this woman is not for sale”, but will she get the backing? Machiavellian ‘Bendin Grope’ is all set to be the planning and regulatory paymaster and sycophant. It is yet to be seen how others bend to the will of ‘El Duce’. We have seen him strutting his stuff on both the hotel issue and a regurgitation of the “harbourside dream”. Those together with the ‘cycling emphasised’ Transport Strategy do not bode well for any sign of reducing expenditure or concentrating on the debt problem.
Rob, we need to be constantly aware of the antics of this ‘little Napoleon’ and to treat it with ridicule else it will be ‘game set and match’ for this little town and nothing left to buy the drinks.
Yes, Calvin. We do.
While we are talking about ‘gerrymandering’, let’s talk about the controversial Transport Strategy on the agenda. This, as we know has a very strong component devoted to ‘cycling’. Now I have just received advice that the survey conducted on views on the cycling situation is now available on the DCC website. How did I get this? Well, I am one of the select people on the People’s Panel who are canvassed in these surveys. Anyone can join if they want to, but at present there are a total of 1,525 registered. Now the respondents to this survey were just 504. I was one of those. The Key Findings are as shown; Actual numbers in parenthesis.
75% (378) use a car as their main mode of transport.
39%(196) would like to use an alternative form of transport.
63% (317) have access to or own a cycle.
43% (231) rarely or never ride a cycle.
93% (468) agree that more cycleways separated from traffic would be better for cyclists.
50% said more separation would encourage them to cycle.
74% (373) agreed that the DCC should spend money building separate cycleways.
55% (277) agreed that the removal of on-street parking should be considered in some locations to make way for separated cycleways.
So there we are. If one goes further into the report you will see how this summary was arrived at. To suggest that the numbers are rigged would be churlish, suffice to say look for yourself. It is all to do with the couching of the questions. But if we are honest, 504 respondents is not a large sampling. I would dearly love to know how many of those were unbiased. Members of ‘Spokes’, and other cycling enthusiasts should have been asked to declare any interest if the survey is to be fair. However, we know that the report to council emanating from this will be seriously emphasising the percentages as shown and any suggestion of the size of the sampling will be ignored. Councillors, if past performances are a guide will take on board the information together with its recommendations and assume that it is the wish of the people that all suggestions are implemented. The fact that it would represent a very small minority of the general population and will be an added expense to our already overblown deficit will not figure in the decision. ‘El Duce’ and sidekick Jinty have already indicated where their interest lies. The question is, will the new council go along or not?
Hasn’t the previous owner of this site wandered off into the sunset though? That was my impression from something he wrote awhile back. Didn’t finish reading it but sounded pretty clear he was off this site?
Calvin, do you remember how the cycling questions were phrased? Were they neutral with no included comment e.g. Would you like to cycle to work? If so, would you like to do it sometimes, or regularly?
Or were they like this: In view of the climate change crisis caused by use of fossil fuels, would you like to be able to cycle to work?
Stuff.co.nz is into those loaded questions. One which is about unruly children in restaurants and other public places asks if it’s OK to object to disruptive kiddies, choices being (approx, from memory) No, children must be allowed to be children or Yes, children should be seen and not heard.
Hype; There were a range of opinions sought, but the main questions required: disagree, strongly disagree, neutral or don’t know. Then agree, strongly agree, neutral and don’t know. It would pay to click on the DCC website and find the PDF relative to July cycleways survey. It’s all there.
Intriguing.
“75% (378) use a car as their main mode of transport.
39%(196) would like to use an alternative form of transport.”
So at least 14% belong to the category {car owners who would like to use alternative transport}.
25% belong to another category “{non-car users who would like to use alternative transport}. Cars, perhaps?