Posts by Paul Campbell
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
I'm not sure I'm the right guy to answer about "the Dunedin Sound" - I left on my OE in '84 when they were all just a bunch of people, some of whom I'd gone to highschool or Uni with, who played in the pub on Fri night - they weren't really organised into a 'sound' at that point, many of them hadn't even settled into which band they wanted to play for, and honestly many of the really wonderfully danceable bands of the era have been long forgotten anyway - no one I knew was BUYing their music at the time other than paying cover charges of course
-
On this basis I plan to get buried out of Dunedin and demand the portion of my rates that go to cemetaries be refunded.
Probably a good idea - the city hiked burial fees by 10% this year to help pay for the stadium debt
-
(And again, I'm not saying the new Dunedin stadium will be a good investment, or that the Cake Tin returned as much money to our city as it was touted - just that it's silly to completely leave the induced benefits out, as if they didn't exist.)
I'm not saying they don't exist but they don't provide benefits to the residents (only 13% of whom went to Carisbrook last year) that match what they're being required to pay. Remember Dunedin is smaller than Wellington, we have 50,000 ratepayers paying for a $200m ($300m including financing) stadium. If it really were the privately funded stadium we were promised I wouldn't have a problem, but it was morphed into this public debt monster against our will.
No one builds a hotel unless they'll have a high enough occupancy rate to pay off the loans - 5 days a year is in the noise compared to what you need to have a viable hotel business - in Dunedin you build it for the perceived year round tourist trade, not for the rugby.
-
Giovanni: if a bar, or a hotel or a restaurant depends on 5 nights a year to make a profit it's already on shaky ground and isn't going to last.
-
Tom: I think there's still a lot of bitterness around town about how the whole stadium thing went down politically, originally it was going to be entirely privately funded, it's just that there was no money forthcoming - to my mind it was a break down in democracy: people marched in the street against it (but not for it), held public meetings, packed out the Town Hall, against it (but not for it), submitted to the council against it at something like 100 to 1 against it, but still the majority of the councilors voted for it, there should have been a referendum.
Now it's turning out that it's costing far more that they said it would ("oh you say we need a scoreboard? and turnstiles? and loos? and kitchens? well of course we didn't include the cost of financing it"), the University jumped in put its weight behind it saying it would be great for several classes in the PhysEd school, but those classes were quietly canceled to cut costs a few months back.
This week we've found out they can't afford the interest on the debt and they're borrowing money to pay it, now there's a financial red flag if ever there was one.
-
Giovanni: the new stadium will be smaller than Carisbrook which seats 30k, the new stadium will have 17k permanent seats and be about 10% smaller than Carisbrook on days when they add temporary bleachers, we will be attracting FEWER visitors to All Black games than we used to - we only get ~5000 to Highlanders games, people really don't come from overseas to see them, that's just marketing, and many of their 'home' games are played elsewhere (Queenstown, Invercargil, Palmerston North).
As I pointed out above the bars pay the same rates no matter how many customers they have
-
heh - I'm just generally frustrated by the whole thing, we're kind of stuck with the silly stadium at this point, the real problem though now is the resulting debt and I think that's going to be the big issue over the next few weeks as we're looking at double digit rates rises in each of the next 2-3 years
Personally what I'm really worried about is how are we going to raise the billion dollars we need to replace our hundred year old water and sewerage system - it's not sexy like a stadium but it's far more important
-
yes but we're not going to get $200m worth of profit from visitors coming to Dunedin for the RWC and even if we did that money would go to hotels and restaurants and bars, not back to the rate payers - local bodies can't raise their own GST to recoup extra cash flow due to something like a stadium those establishments will pay the same rates whether there's a RWC or not - in essence the rate payers are subsidising the RWC by more than $200m without a referendum or anything.
-
Its meaningfulness is still bugger all if you ask me. None of those amenities are open only ninety minute a week during the rugby season. Also, you don't pay to visit the cemetery or the library. (Yet.)
Of course we pay for the cemetery and the library (through our rates). This is a particularly big issue here in Dunedin where we we've basically been forced to build a replacement for Carisbrook with hundreds of millions of dollars of ratepayer's money (despite street protests and packed out public meetings), yet upgrading the Regent Theatre to make sure stuff doesn't fall on performers still requires private fundraising (and this week it looks like the Fortune Theatre may be a goner now that Creative NZ has decided to focus on Auckland)
I think it's fair to spend rates on things that people use, but there should be some sort of proportionality - if people use public toilets and cemeteries more than rugby stadiums we should spend more on them - but honestly we shouldn't be spending public money on for-profit organisations like the Highlanders, it's not like we get a rates reduction if they make a profit
-
well no - Stout street will also be renamed ....