Physics for beginners
It seems the proverbial is headed for the fan at a blistering speed as the Diva's unplanned profligacy with other people's money makes it onto the Strategy Committee agenda for this Thursday.
After admiring all those nice shiny new votes which referendumbs gave the diVisionites to play with, Councillors are now finding they come with a price tag - one that Wanganui is going to struggle to pay.
Once again it's fallen to Keith Hindson to deliver the bad news on the Splash Centre. With the Diva's propensity to shoot the messenger, we'd imagine the Sits Vac columns are regular reading in the Hindson household. And now, Watchers, let's delve into financial management, Mickey (Mouse) style. According to Hindson:
External funding for the project currently sits at $525,928. The funding includes the Powerco Trust’s $500,000 and the Toyota raffle.Ah yes, the raffle. Staggeringly, the only cash raised by John Unsworth and his cronies. Who was it that said back in September that he’d put his name down for fundraising to help out the poor country hicks? Oh, that's right - the Diva.
An application has been made to the Whanganui Community Foundation for $1 million.That must have left a particularly bitter taste in the Mayoral mouth. After all, he's long had it in for the WCF and particularly the CEO Judith Timpany, a respected, competent woman with an admirable record of contributing to volunteering in Wanganui and beyond. Savour the irony, Watchers, as the Diva now begs the Foundation for cool $1 million to perhaps prolong the travel time of said excrement to fan.
The Lotteries Trust Board advises it only funds up to $10,000 for capital projects.Whoopsie. Whose job was it to check these things before embarking on grandiose schemes? Not, surely, one of the new boy network? Not when everything is the fault of the old boy network, according to no less an authority than the Mayor himself, in his latest e-column (see post below).
As of December 2005 the FEC (LW: final estimate of cost) was $5,331,875.So why has it taken till end of March 2006 for this gem to appear on an agenda? Anything to do with making things look rosy till after the plebs have voted, perchance. Apparently Dotty (chair of Strategy) tried to kick it into touch.
Hindson recommends that the council underwrites the entire $5,300,000. Well, what else could he do? Tell the Diva he'd made a giant mistake and he now had to break his promise to build this shining testament to his Mayoral magnificence? Not if he wanted any hope of keeping his job he wouldn't.
One would expect Unsworth to come in for a Mayoral spray but we're not holding our breath thanks to his business connections with Dotty's husband, making him firmly one of the new boys.
The funding group continues to fundraise and reimburse the council the shortfall currently anticipated at $3,163,000 within two years.Let's see... that's $4332.88 a day. And they'll have to work Sundays.
Hindson then suggests that to reduce the upfront capital cost, the hydroslide could be dropped (that was on the table back in September) saving $655,000 for a total cost of $4,676,875.
But even then the cost escalation is already $130,000 and will increase by at least $1,300 a day thereafter. If the hydroslide stays, the daily escalation will be at least $1460 per day. So off you go, John... better start baking cakes and clearing out the garage for one huge sale.
Therefore the council needs to either identify further deletions to the project or commence work as soon as possible. This carries the risk that the community will not be supportive of a scaled back design.Yes, and the risk that a duped populace might begin constructing a guillotine in Guyton Street, though Hindson wisely eschews mention of that particular fallout.
But he saves the real clincher till last. Winding up for the pitch, he lets go the excrement in the direction of the fan:
There is a real risk that the Council will have to fund the entire project.Oh, and since that pesky LTCCP only identifes a budget of $2.5 million over two years, council "could be required to undertake the special consultative procedure"... in other words, to seek the public's opinion on just what they think of this almighty mess. That will be fun.
Drawing on our renowned powers of prediction, allow LawsWatch to suggest that the powers that be might be considering, say, the impost of a special rate on the long-suffering backs of Wanganuites (perhaps called a cultural facilities rate so the hoi polloi don't think it has anything to do with Mickey's excremental swimming pool outing).
But of course that would hardly wash with such an informed and interested electorate coming so soon after a buy-election in which the visionary candidate (nor anyone else for that matter) made no mention of such an intolerable burden... but then again...
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17 comments:
Not reading those council papers too well LW. Acording to their financials they have $6m-$7m of assets (freehold and city endowment) that they've identified as surplus and available for sale. If they use that money then it won't cost council or the ratepayer a cent and that's the option I'd certainly like to see them take. After all the SGTB and the last council agreed to flog off art works to fund the Sarjeant extension and Splash is very much more popular!
For a supposedly secretive organisation this council is remarkably frank if this posting can be believed and is properly quoting council papers.
The Splash extension is not Council's "project". They agreed to fund it with $2.5m after last year's referendum as the ratepayer's contribution. They may offer more so what's the scandal here and why is LW so negative about a swimming pool that this community really needs?
Well done LawsWatch. I’m told the agendas are hot properties at local watering holes (just think, it used to be the Sallie Army flogging off copies of WatchTower). Just watch, they’ll be appearing on Trade Me any minute now.
This posting is 72 hours late - the mayor's e-column raised all these "facts" on Monday morning.
As a Vision supporter I'm getting a bit tired of this. Why can't Michael just tell us the truth without all this spin and blame? It seems even building inflation is someone's fault.
He's going to have to do better than this if he wants my vote again. We were promised rates freezes which turned out to be bogus, and I still can't get a sensible answer on increased annual running costs for the swimming pool.
The way Keith Hindson seems to go from leper to guru is a little odd too.
Oh, whoa *smirk*
Mr. 1.6% needs some help with those lifeless ratings, according to the latest Listener. But where is Radio Lifeless getting its new celebrities from? Are they trawling more of the depths of redneck-frothing-at-the-mouth a la Mr. 1.6? Noo, children. They've gone and hired a bunch of lefties. Better suits their demographic or something.
How will Mickey spin this one? All the details in the Listener.
roflmao
Anonymayor said (somewhat desperately incoherent, but...)
8% of Wanganui (popn 40,000) would not compute to 1.6% of NZ (popn 4 million). Maths would suggest 3,200 versus 64,000...
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So I thought I'd really start pushing his buttons. Here's what statistics nz have to say:
"In the 12 months before the survey, an estimated 269,000 people, or 10 percent of adult New Zealanders, bought an original art work. "
64,000 against 269,000 Mickey? Run and get your abacus.
And then choke on this:
"An estimated 1.34 million New Zealanders, or 48 percent of those aged 15 and over, visited an art gallery or museum in the 12 months before the survey. Fifty-one percent of New Zealand women made visits, compared with 46 percent of men."
64,000 as a percentage of 1,340,000?
I'll let you do the maths on that one.
LawsWatch posted:
"Seems the Whanganui Community Foundation is going to be stood over to ensure it "plays a prominent role" (also known as "bails us out"). The Diva's rationale for this is that "its very name suggests that it exists for the sole purpose of funding community initiatives". On that basis, the Council's very name suggests it should take council from those who know what they're talking about but we all know that's never going to happen."
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It's all around Council. The Foundation has donated the $1 million. Good on them and good on the mayor for asking them. The Splash Centre extension is suddenly very affordable. Shame on the knockers.
This posting is 72 hours late - the mayor's e-column raised all these "facts" on Monday morning.
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But not quite the way LW does it!!!! I know which one I'd rather read.
This posting is 72 hours late - the mayor's e-column raised all these "facts" on Monday morning.
Oh, you got us there. Yes, we totally did not first raise the issue of expenditure blowouts, with specific reference to the e-column back on Monday.
Of course, the alternative explanation could be that you're going blind. Have you check for hairs on the palms, anon?
" Yes, we totally did not first raise the issue of expenditure blowouts"
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OMG!! LW is written by teenagers
The Splash Centre extension has the potential to end in tears for the ratepayer. It,s costly in both capital and running costs- other than the wastewater programme it's the biggest game in town at a suggested $5.3M capital cost , and more than $800,000 pa running costs. I was therefore staggered to receive an agenda for tomorrows Council meeting that crams the issue amongst 17 other items at a 4 pm start meeting ( one of which, the Tram Project, I am involved in). I will find it interesting to see how the debate (if any)proceeds on the many important issues on the agenda. I dont believe that there will be much opportunity for councillors to effectively debate the issue - and that's not in the best interests of ratepayers. For instance, I would like to see a list of the assets to the value of $3M that is intended to be sold to repay the borrowing - especially as Wanganui Holdings has told Council that it has so far only realised $45,000.
Does anyone know what they are?
The pools cool, the city is rocking apart from the way this crazy mayor of ours goes about his business. Trying to pit everything and everyone against each other. Anyway, glad the pool got bailed out.
Like, dude (anon @ 1.46 pm), like totally stop jumping to conclusions. We were just like "OMG someone thinks we're teenagers!!". You are SO not cool.
Rob Vinsen said
I was therefore staggered to receive an agenda for tomorrows Council meeting that crams the issue amongst 17 other items at a 4 pm ..
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From what I've heard we should be thankful that it's even on the agenda. Apparently it got on there over chairqueen Dotty's dead body (or something similar but who could tell the difference). She would rather just bask in the river queen gory (sorry glory) and keep all discussion of vision incompetence for discussion at vision caucus meetings, no doubt.
Mickey doubtless thinks that by acting like he's just won the million dollar lottery for Wangas he will deflect all attempts to have a debate (that thing that grown up council's have) about the underlying cockups.
That's going to be good news for Mas and the Con Capers lot who were probably dreading writing the story about what's really at stake here in the river city.
Anyway, best of British with the tram project, guys. Just get the sign writers in and call it the Mayoral Tram, and put out a press release thanking the mayor for suggesting such a great idea. That should put the project right on track for a bir of mayoral grace and favour.
The question is, was the Foundation fully informed about the extent of the ongoing cost blowout?
Given they had pretty much made their decision before the $5.3 mill news broke, and presumably they hadn't seen the Hindson report to today's meeting (can't imagine Mickey and Unsworth handing out copies to the trustees, somehow) they probably weren't aware that their $500K cash wasn't going to make any sort of dent in the bigger scheme of things. After all, they were no doubt working off the $4.5 mill price tag, and Mickey's September assurances that it wouldn't go past that.
No wonder Dot didn't want the report to go public till after she knew for sure they had the foundation money in the bag. As it now stands the foundation is just throwing good money after bad.
And now Mickey's claiming it's affordable, doable, etc. What a lot of crapola.
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