Ka ching! Ka ching!

Watchers are reeling in from the evening "Heart" presentation with a sound akin to being trapped in the bowels of a pokie machine ringing in their ears.

Millions and millions and more millions are talked of... full details are available on a reasonably informative website (which wins multiple extra points for managing to avoid including so much as a single photo of the Mayor!).

The status quo, they tell us, will cost $13.5 million over the next decade, because of the requirement for structural work on several buildings. Then the options range from $9 million (Option 7) to $69.7 million (Option 5) (and that's not counting the underground carpark for a mere $4.1 million, which can be added to any of the other options much like one might choose to add a garage to their granny flat).

The costs are helpfully broken down into a "per ratepayer per year" figure, with the maximum dip into your back pocket being $246. That, pesumably is not "a signifcant rise in rates", since Mickey is on record as telling the Chron that that wouldn't be needed.

However, all is not as clear as it seems, since the project descriptions aren't explicit about what happens to the bits of the infrastructure which aren't earmarked for an upgrade. For instance, Options 2, 3 and 4 merely offer various choices for the library, including "media walls" (looped re-runs of 'Game of Three Losers', anyone?).

Presumably the other buildings will just receive the minimum work needed to bring them up to spec, which is why a "status quo" figure sits alongside the various figures required to build Sally and Mickey's dream house.

So each of the option totals needs to have added to it the "status quo" figure alongside it. That's a tad misleading, in our opinion - the average punter might think that "status quo" is the "do nothing" choice, as outlined in Option 1.

In other words, they won't for instance add the $10.5 million to the $69.7 million in Option 5 to arrive at a grand total of $80.2 million.

Clearly, some of the options are exclusive of one another and others are meant to be at least considered as part of a "package"of options, combining two or more to produce a desirable outcome. Which options are which is also not made explicitly clear on the website (though Option 6 does mention that it works in with Options 2, 3 and 4. But then what if voters opt for Option 6 but not the others? And if they do choose both, will the misnamed "status quo" figure then reduce?). Hopefully things will become clearer as the discussion continues.

The website seems a surprisingly straightforward (by Mickey's usual standard) presentation of the options. But the devil is in the details, including just how much "flexibility" lies within those cost estimates.

There's also the claim that "some external funding can be secured". This is projected at up to $8 million for Option 5, but zero for the status quo. Who's to say a corporate donor wouldn't step in to, for instance, install climate control at the Sarjeant so the works curated there weren't slowly deteriorating? And who's to say $8 million will fall from the pockets of corporates?

There's a comprehensive list of community meetings happening all over Wanganui, so if people haven't pinned Mickey, the architects and councillors down on the details by the time they come to vote, they'll have only themselves to blame.

The questions posed in our previous post are, as we expected, neatly skirted around. But Honest Mickey's Used Architecture Inc offers a customer service hotline and an email address to ask "questions... which are not answered in the information you have seen so far". Given Mickey's record to date, we'd advise using the email option - that way the answers are recorded for posterity and for LawsWatch): heart@wanganui.govt.nz

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