Stop the Stadium

By Meg Davidson

Robin Charteris’s Dunedin,  so eloquently described in “Time to polish off the knockers” (ODT 9.9.08) is my Dunedin too. Returning to the city of my birth I have fallen in love; the grey, dilapidated city I grew up with in the 1960s and 70s has been transformed, and I can do no better than to quote Mr Charteris:   through the wisdom of our city fathers it has become “a strong, vibrant, extremely-liveable small city in an incomparable harbour-hugging setting with amenities, attributes and a lifestyle for which countless millions of people elsewhere would give their eye teeth.” 

Restored and reinvigorated, Dunedin’s heritage buildings have never looked so good. It cost ratepayers $13.5million to transform a department store in the Octagon into a sophisticated world-class art gallery and the Chinese Garden to which they contributed $1million is a triumph.  Buoyed by successes like these, the city is buzzing with new projects;  reinstating trams or cable cars – or both – is just one. 

Like Mr Charteris I hope for, and expect, a bright future for Dunedin. There are challenges that must be faced. The Pacific is threatening St Kilda (and I doubt the residents would agree with the chap who, as we surveyed the eroding sand-dunes, commented that nature should be left to take its course). Further sewage treatment facilities will cost tens of million on top of hundreds of millions already spent. New jobs are needed to replace those recently lost; we must retain and increase our population, and people won’t come to a city that isn’t attractive and dynamic.

To allude to these challenges is not to be a doom-merchant. It is simply facing facts.  Dunedin has stared down past threats with courage and imagination, and the city we have now is testament to that.  I’m sure Mr Charteris would agree. 

But it’s when he starts talking about how our present challenges might be met – specifically whether they would be adequately addressed by spending $140million of public money on a $188 million stadium at Awatea Street - that he and I start to differ.  

Mr Charteris is a stadium supporter. He is charitable enough not to number his “sincere and thoughtful” anti-stadium friends among the naysayers he condemns, and in a letter to the editor on 24.9.08 he restates his call “to mix prudence with vision” and to remove the stadium project’s “fish hooks”. He is confident our city and regional councils and the Carisbrook Stadium Trust are ‘addressing the issues and problems [of the stadium] responsibly’. 

I don’t share that faith. Both DCC chief executive Jim Harland and  finance manager Athol Stephens had concerns which were expressed in the chief executive’s 14 March 2008 report. If construction costs go over budget “debt servicing costs could become unsustainable”. A shortfall of private funding would be “very serious” for the DCC and the city’s holding company’s capacity to service the debt “would be substantially jeopardised”.  The conditions that the DCC put on the decision to support the stadium have not been met, yet the DCC has bought the land for the stadium and agreed to underwrite $55 million of private funding.  The DCC-commissioned peer reviews sounded strong warnings about the financial viability of the project and the number of exclusions from the budget. Further information requested by the reviewers was not provided, and the reviews were never completed. 

The ORC did not supply its councillors with the peer reviews  –  the only independent opinion available  -  relying instead on a briefing from the Carisbrook Stadium Trust. 

Mr Charteris cites Dunedin’s existing buildings and facilities.  If the naysayers had had their way, he says, these “amazing amenities” would not have been built. But the comparisons he draws with the Awatea Street stadium are not valid and his 24.9.08 explanation muddies the waters still further. 

The town hall WAS built by the ratepayers, but not with borrowed money. When in 1923 Dunedin’s ratepayers were asked to sanction a £90,000 loan for the town hall they dug their toes in. There was anxiety about Dunedin’s ability to survive and instead, the council poured money into the international exhibition, timed to boost the city’s population in the 1926 census. It worked. The city’s trading departments thrived; the town hall was paid for with cash. By contrast, the Awatea Street stadium would require a $91.4 million DCC loan which over a 20 year term would approximately double to $180 million. 

Innovative thinking went into future-proofing Dunedin in the 1920s, but this was not achieved by raising a crippling loan. The 1923 ratepayers were right to say nay to that.

Yes, Robin, it is “crap” that “Dunedin today is a city of depressives and whingers hunkering down under doom-laden skies” (ODT 24.9.08).  Where are these glass-half-empty whingers? The anti-stadium people I know, like the 1923 ratepayers, are not hand-wringing pessimists but optimists with a more imaginative vision of Dunedin.

An ambitious plan is not guaranteed success just by dint of being ambitious.  Let’s consider some great Dunedin visions of yesteryear: the 1950s plan to reclaim the whole upper harbour for an airport and industrial development; the 1960s plan to cover the Octagon with concrete pedestrian flyovers; the 1980s smelter at Aramoana. 

The CST’s scale model of the stadium is soon to go on public display. Backtrack to September 1970, when a scale model was used to promote plans to demolish Dunedin’s municipal chambers in favour of a new civic complex. Eventually the present library and civic centre were built, but public opposition saved the municipal chambers.  

No doubt the “naysayers” of the day got a hammering over their opposition to these projects.  Thank goodness they prevailed.   

Who are the real doom-mongers: those of us who caution against the wilder schemes the so-called visionaries dream up,  or the visionaries themselves: those who insist that Dunedin needs saving – needs a smelter/airport/stadium or it will die? 

Mr Charteris, like you I am proud of Dunedin. I want this city to visualise its vibrant future, and I too say: Dunedin, get on with it. We don’t need this stadium to make it happen.  

Dear Sir,

Claims made on the costs of a new stadium are confusing. This confusion is not reduced by Mr Harland’s reply to a letter on 6/11/08. The $66 per year over twenty years cost to ratepayers refers to covers only a portion of the total costs of the project. Actually a small portion.

The debate has become very confused on these issues, liabilities being shuffled form one place to another with considerable creativity.

However, there is another way of looking at this problem.

The new stadium should not be considered in isolation. It is to be a replacement for our present ’stadium’, Carisbrook. Assuming we must maintain the facility currently provided by Carisbrook, it is the comparison of the costs of two projects that must be compared.

On this basis, the costs to the people of the Otago region for a new stadium can be estimated.

It will cost at least $100,000,000 more for a new stadium than to redevelop Carisbrook. Assuming 8.5% interest and 3.5% depreciation, it will cost at least $12,000,000 per year for the use of this capital. It has been claimed that this cost is justified on the basis of extra economic activity that the stadium would generate in the Otago region.

However, despite a year’s hard work, the Carisbrook Stadium Trust has been unable to identify any activities for the new stadium that cannot already be hosted by Dunedin’s current facilities. Benefits to the Otago University are claimed but not established.

There will be very little extra economic activity generated by a new stadium in the Otago area. There will be no return on the extra $100,000,000 required if a new stadium is built. Thus the $12,000,000 cost per year will be an indefinite liability for which we get a very large and architecturally uninspiring lump on our harbour foreshore.

The true cost of the new stadium option is at least $12,000,000 per year for as long as we have a stadium. Whether this cost is met from rates, profits of Council owned companies, community organisations, or even private contributions is irrelevant, it is a very large cost on the regional economy which will affect us all for a very long time.

Malcolm McQueen

Trust Us… We’re the Experts

By Ian Smith

I recently came across a previously undiscovered ‘thread’ on the ‘StS’ web-site and for once, a matter under discussion was a subject in which I have an interest, namely ‘acoustics’.

This comes about in a rather roundabout way, beginning with a video project I have been involved with for the last three years. During that time, I have assembled something like seventy DVD-discs of documentary material relating to the Otago Coastline; to be specific, a journey from North to South down its entire length, from the Waitaki River Mouth in the North, to the ‘Brothers’ Peninsula far down the Catlins, where Otago ceases and Southland begins. Much of this I have traversed on foot and the project is beyond the halfway mark.

One problem area in such an undertaking is background music. Originally I helped myself to the classics freely, using minutes at a time of ‘Sibelius’, ‘Ravel’, ‘Mendelssohn’, ‘Scriabin’ and countless others. Having been interested in film-making since the 1960s, through the era when the 16mm camera reigned supreme, to today’s much more practical option of video, I didn’t give much thought to the matter of copyright, until I read an article dealing with wholesale piracy of music from internet sources. Perhaps my project would also be affected. So I set about devising a solution for the problem.

Music lessons had been part of my daily routine since the age of six. The half-hour daily I was lined up by my parents to practice, was never going to make me into another Menuhin, but as I approached the age of eighteen or so, thirty minutes was just nice time to dash off the ‘Franck’ A-major sonata, or one of the simpler Concertos, which I played tolerably well. My tutor and I frequently played the two instrumental parts of the Bach ‘Double-Concerto’ but I hankered to hear my efforts against the background of Bach’s orchestra, which would have given the music much more sense, immediacy and meaning for me.

‘Fast-forward’ more than half a century, and here I am at it again, this time trying my hand at composition. As a youngster, I’d always had a yen to be a composer, to create vast Symphonies, which dazzled the World with my brilliance and cemented my place forever amongst the rich and famous. The reality, of course, is vastly different; even Beethoven had been forced, at one stage, to ‘moonlight’ by turning out batches of ‘Scottish Songs’ for a publisher in Edinburgh. To hell with string quartets and chamber music, I’d dive straight in at the deep end with a Piano Concerto, or a Symphony or two.

Except, life’s just not like that. Yes, there’s a ‘Piano Concerto’, it’s half finished and I am quite pleased with it, to date. Those fifteen-hour days I have put in at the computer are beginning to bear fruit. It’s an unashamedly ‘populist’ effort, able to be enjoyed, I would hope, by people with no particular background in the classics; like the Saint-Saens ‘Fourth’ or the lovely little ‘Scriabin’, but not half as adventurous.

There are two things you soon become acutely aware of when scoring music for an orchestra: the need to appreciate the ranges and limitations of a diverse range of vastly different instruments, and the role played by acoustics in the best possible presentation of the material.

To Judith’s consternation, I invested more than $1000 in software, carefully evaluated beforehand, and then downloaded from various overseas sources. She capitulated in the end by working out that ‘At least it keeps him occupied and happy’, as indeed it does. The orchestral ‘samplings’ (notes played in every mode possible by a range of different instruments), came from the ‘Garritan’ web site in Washington DC. This site also runs ‘tutorials’ on composition, orchestration and a number of other facets of music-making, and a lot can be learned from them. In addition, the London-based ‘Philharmonia’ makes available many music scores for study. If I have a query as to how Ravel might have orchestrated some part of the ‘Daphnis and Chloe’ ballet music, or how Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov suggested the motion of long ocean swells, as he did at the beginning of his ‘Scheherezade’, logging onto the appropriate web- site and having a ‘shufti’ at the orchestral score can frequently clarify matters.

Acoustics come into the picture from a different standpoint. The reproduction of music on a computer involves the use of the sound card’s sixteen MIDI channels. These ‘channels’ do not carry ‘sounds’; they carry blocks of binary code, which convey the music’s pitch, timbre and other characteristics. Unlike a piano, they don’t involve a percussive hammer-blow on a stretched string which fades away, to generate notes; they are like an organ, in which the sound is usually either ‘on’ or ‘off’. The ‘shaping’ of notes to imitate the ways the instruments of the orchestra ‘sound’ when played, must be done by other means.

Now, to come to the point. Acoustically, computer-generated music is ‘dead’ or if you prefer, ‘neutral’. Except in rare cases, there is none of the ‘character’ of a live performance in it when written and performed using a computer, My final step with each ‘piece’ I have written, (I have already done quite a few short snippets and added them to my video), is to breathe ‘life’ into it by placing it in an ‘ambience’ and of course, the ideal medium is the concert-hall.

That is how I have a working familiarity with the electronics/acoustics interface in the process, and how I know that there are limitations to what can be accomplished in the way of sound modification by means of software. To simply infer that bad acoustics can be overcome by someone sitting behind a sound-engineer’s console is, in my opinion, both ludicrous, and laughably wide of the mark. Many badly recorded CDs can testify to that.

Take the nature of sound, itself. It proceeds outwards, away from its source at the speed of, well, ‘sound’. Depending on what the soundwaves encounter on their journey it may be deflected, absorbed, reflected, partly neutralised by interaction with its own ‘out-of-phase’ components, and so-on. The playing of a ‘piece’ in an empty concert-hall during rehearsal, is vastly different to the same piece on the night of the performance when the same space is ‘peopled’, since the presence of an audience has roughly similar powers of sound-absorption as heavily carpeted floors (and possibly walls); or in the household situation, heavy drapes, upholstered furniture, pot-plants and other domestic accoutrements.

The bald statement that bad acoustics are able to be overcome by electronics and sophisticated software is valid, up to a point, but beyond certain limits, the very nature and physics of sound ensure that this cannot be so. We are all familiar with the ‘echo’ phenomenon, which is so noticeable in large spaces, garbled speech in announcements in large stadia and airport buildings. Beyond a certain size of venue, the sound’s out-of-phase components tend to be reflected back towards the listener. When they are one-hundred and eighty degrees out of phase, for example, the nett effect is ‘subtractive’; the signal is partly cancelled out by its own diminished reflection back towards the source. It is necessary when setting up a stereo system, for example, to ensure that identically phased signals fed to the two (or more) speakers cause the speaker-cones to move in the same direction on the same signal, otherwise your 300w RMS ‘beast’ will never be capable of starting that landslide in the back garden.

With my music, I am careful to create ‘space’ around the virtual orchestra by means of ‘Reverb’ and similar devices. These usually come in the form of VST filters, a system borrowed from Steinberg in Germany, to offer a standard ‘plug-in’ platform across a wide range of audio software. My favourite ‘filters’ come from ‘Kjaerhus’ in Denmark; almost incredibly in this day and age, they are ‘free’ for anyone to download. I’ve tweaked the adjustments to give me my own ‘space’, 400 cubic metres, between ‘large concert hall’ and its smaller counter-part. More spacious options produce too much ‘reverb’ and things tend to ‘fly-to-pieces’ with echoes. Very much the same, I would surmise, as could occur in the Awatea Street Stadium, given the shape of the ‘building’, should this unfortunate project go-ahead.

Much will depend on the sound absorbency or reflectivity of the E.T.F.E material chosen for the outer-cladding and I think it is fair to say, in spite of claims to the contrary, that no-one involved with its design must have the faintest inkling of whether the edifice will wind up with superb acoustics, or be a total ‘bummer’. One thing, of which I am certain, is that design defects will not be able to be made-good by means of software-based modification. Above a certain cubic capacity, should the walls prove to be ‘reflective’, music will likely be distorted and garbled in many parts but the area immediately in front of the stage, the area in which sound from ‘up-front’ simply blasts everything else out of existence. Should the nett effect be ‘absorbency’, there will probably be complaints that the venue ‘didn’t do the band justice’. Given the shape of the Stadium’s shell, it is possible there will be all sorts of problems with reflections, inter-modulation products and other undesirable aberrations of any sound source featured.

Personally, I don’t care. It’s not my kind of music. I worked out long ago that music based almost solely upon rhythm was the music of those cultures, whose ascent up the evolutionary scale had not been marked by conspicuous success, while music based upon harmony, and particularly its many and manifold complexities, was the stuff of ‘intellect’. Just listen to what thunders around your neighbourhood from the ‘boom-box’ of next ‘boy-racer’ to drive down your street, and you’ll quickly catch-on. Were I to live my life over again, I would abandon my ambition for reincarnation as a stud bull, in favour of a career as an audiologist. I am sure I would never go short of prospects, given the numbers of our young people seemingly hell-bent on deafening themselves.

We are privileged to have in Dunedin, a Town Hall with acknowledged excellent acoustics. It has greater seating capacity than the Sydney Opera House, although we have had, until recently, a group of people with a seeming determination to stuff it all up. Having been, for most of the last month, on a visit to the land of Palm-trees, soft south-easterly trade-winds, lukewarm tropical rain-showers, crocodiles and bloody great mosquitoes, has allowed me to return to Dunedin with a fresh perspective on some matters.

This ‘Nirvana’ has been, as it has been on six previous occasions, Port Douglas, partway up Cape York Peninsula in Australia’s Tropical North. We have this theory, in fact, that having tried ‘the rest’, (Gold Coast, ‘Surfers’, Noosa and the like), many Kiwis will eventually follow in the footsteps of Australians in-the-know and choose what we have found to be ‘the-best’. For those of you who don’t know the ‘Port’, it is not a ‘typical’ Australian resort. The population of the town is only 3,000, which grows to 8,000 or more at the height of the tourist ‘season’.

Port Douglas has been administered until recently by the Douglas Shire Council, a body that had taken great pains to preserve the town’s ‘village’ atmosphere. For that reason, no building rises more than three storeys, local by-laws simply don’t permit it. Developers wishing to maximise profit by building ‘high-rises’ on small ‘footprints’, have found their efforts thwarted. ‘McDonalds’ gave up and left town after not getting their own way with their trade- mark, the hideous ‘Big M’ sign. It could be put up, but was not to be illuminated, day or night.

The town depends, to a great extent, on the proximity of the Great Barrier Reef, the planet’s largest living organism, and the reef is highly sensitive to run-off, particularly if it contains traces of detergent and chemical residues from the various resorts, especially those close to the beach. We lived for a month at ‘Treetops’ and for another on ‘Solander Boulevard’ on earlier visits and became aware that some resorts were forced to wash dishes under high-pressure water, rather than use detergents. That certainly applied, when we stayed at ‘Treetops’. In the staff dining-room, no discharge of dish-washing agent was permitted at all.

In the tradition that nothing which runs smoothly and to everyone’s satisfaction will remain beyond the reach of the ‘stuffers-up’ and their dubious talents indefinitely, the Shire Council has been replaced, by edict, with rule from Cairns. For most of Port Douglas’s history most things ‘went-south’ to its larger neighbour, because that’s where the political clout’ lay. There is something else, which will resonate with Dunedin citizens in Port Douglas’s plight. There was absolutely no consultation, nor even a pretence of it.

The matter has been taken up at the highest level, namely with Queensland Premier Anna Bligh who was due to visit the town on the day after we set out to fly home. The Port Douglas people had promised her a ‘meeting she would remember’ and knowing them as I do, every endeavour would have been taken to ensure that was what she would get.

The alternative is almost as unthinkable as the prospect of our Stadium. The ‘developers’ will flock into the resort, and Cairns interests will create a ‘satellite’ in the image of their own city. Now, I have nothing much against Cairns, I have stayed there many times for a day or to on the way ‘to’ or ‘from’; but I know where I would rather be, of choice.

And, therein lies the difference between the people of Port Douglas and Dunedin. In Port Douglas, people do not sit on their hands, eyes firmly fixed on their navels and wait for everyone else to fulfil their wish-list for them; they get themselves involved, and do something about the situation. When they say they will withhold their rates, I for one, wouldn’t count-on-it not happening.

I fear that the ludicrous edifice proposed for Awatea St looks likely to go-ahead. The next step will almost certainly be ‘fast-tracking’ to ensure completion before the 2011 World Cup. To do so, the Council will likely have to bend, or even break, most of its own rules. There will, of course, be very plausible reasons for doing do, and an aura of ‘integrity’ will pervade every fresh development. We will allow this because we are complacent and spineless. Others of us will take the view that we must defer to the Council and CST in the matter, because they are the ‘experts’… Let’s see how they shape-up with ‘acoustics.’

Opinion, Otago Daily Times, 29 Oct 2008

From a regional perspective, the new sports stadium makes little financial sense, argues Jolyon Manning.

There can be little doubt but that many good folk in Otago are crazy about football, but that does not lay a good foundation for employing the Otago Regional Council as a taxing authority. The latest move to name the project an Otago stadium focuses attention on the elected residential population catchment.

Southland interests who have made good investment choices in their own sports and recreational community amenities in recent years have shown little enthusiasm to back up with funding support of the proposed stadium.

North Otago communities are quite lukewarm, too. The wealthy community based on Queenstown and Wanaka now have more convenient air access to Christchurch than Dunedin. (Recent Queenstown Airport passenger numbers have now moved past those recorded at the Dunedin airport).

The critical mass attendance requirement for a regular series of major metropolitan events is well beyond the Otago and Southland population base. Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington and Christchurch all command much greater regional populations and recent indications from the New Zealand Rugby Football Union regards choice of venues for the forthcoming World Cup serve to highlight this factor, with Otago (and Southland) not within the present focus.

Rates proposed for Otago households lie well beyond that being extracted in this manner by the northern territorial local authorities.

So the stadium is now to be called the Otago stadium. Reminds one of other think big events in the past 50 years - the Clyde dam, the Port Chalmers container port, the Aramoana aluminium smelter, various as yet untapped hydro-electric schemes, the proposed wind farms and cement factory in North Otago and now the Otago Stadium.

Only this time, the proposed community investment is to be funded almost entirely from ratepayers and householders both directly and indirectly (Community Trust). Commercial contributors would not begin to embrace this project without such lavish ratepayer support.

Despite the millions already diverted towards this dream project, it is surely time to pull the plug and direct these energies to other more important Otago projects. We urgently need to strengthen the linkage between the Otago hinterland and city with added value and employment.

The $37.5 million package of ratepayer funded support for the proposed Dunedin stadium represents a major departure from the Otago Regional Council’s (ORC) primary mission as set out in its Annual and Long-Term Community Plans. Indeed this could be regarded as a form of taxation for purposes well outside the prescriptive mission of the ORC.
In view of the magnitude of this enforced gifting arrangement, I am astonished that the question of the ORC mission has not been subject to closer scrutiny and challenge. The council’s capital budget has been already stretched by the investment in a handsome waterfront administrative office project.

When I survey the much more modest ratepayer per capita claims that councils in the other metropolitan districts are making on their citizens’ behalf for such stadium assets, I wonder whether the rugby entertainment agenda has taken on far too much prominence in our provincial affairs and that we have lost our sense of balance.

The apparent support of many councillors and Otago people as a whole would seem to underline the great following rugby football has in Otago, mainly I suspect for armchair viewing on Sky Television. Yet the recent record of Otago footballers and the steadily declining attendances at Carisbrook for other than top-ranked international events, and financial dependence upon council funding do not augur well for future prospects.

In common with other regional councils, the ORC was gifted with the profitable Otago Port asset, which has softened the financial burden for Otago ratepayers in meeting the primary mission of the ORC.

Not that the port operations will necessarily continue to be as profitable as in recent times. Competition for the big container trades now being concentrated in fewer ports is still placing pressure on the profitability of Port Chalmers - supplemented by the recent upsurge in cruise ship business, although this, too, is subject to periodic fluctuation of demand.

I have closely followed the work of the Dunedin City Council’s Economic Development unit, which was established in the days when I was serving as a councillor. And I was a little disappointed when Malcom Farry departed the council, since he did a good job in chairing that committee for several years.

But the whole business of the World Cup in rugby football being staged in New Zealand has captured the enthusiasm of thousands of rugby supporters. And perhaps it was therefore not surprising that a rather unholy alliance of local political figures, including chairman Stephen Cairns and CEO Graeme Martin of the ORC, Mayor Peter Chin and CEO Jim Harland of the DCC, together with Malcom Farry, launched a radical proposal for a lavish indoor stadium to replace the ageing House of Pain Carisbrook venue but still employing its iconic brand and international fame. Now, were this bold new enterprise to be funded in the main by football enthusiasts, together with the support of commercial enterprises (notably the television people) who would stand to gain profits and significant sales and revenue, one could not quibble too much. After all, as mayor Sir Cliff Skeggs used to say to fellow councillors, we live today in a user-pays society. But to place the major funding burden (tax) on ratepayers to the quite unprecedented extent of $131 million is a different matter.

And in particular to employ the ORC as a conduit for no less than $37.5 million is in my view quite outrageous. This type of expenditure lies well beyond the previously affirmed mission statement of the ORC and was in no way foreshadowed by the ORC Long Term Council Community Plan for the decade 2006-16.

I think this represents unscrupulous manipulation behind the scenes of innocent ratepayers, many of whom like myself will be quite astonished at the extravagance of this venture, unequalled by the recent record of ratepayer funding of metropolitan stadiums elsewhere. Earlier funding of the Moana Pool, and the Dunedin Town Hall, let alone such externally funded assets as the Dunedin Railway Station did not call for excessive taxing of our ratepayers to meet vested interest objectives.

The Otago Forward group of district mayors, together with a few unelected members, has, over the past decade, looked at a number of projects of provincial-wide benefit but the stadium project is overly extravagant for taxpayers compared with other suggested development projects.

Why is it that there has been such a numbed response from ratepayers and especially those coming from the outlying rural districts? Admittedly there are a lot of rugby football folk in these parts but the likelihood of tens of thousands coming into town more than a few times a year is surely a remote prospect.

Of course this is only part of the funding story. When this extraordinary edifice is erected (if ever it is) the likely annual expenditure and depreciation charges will surely overwhelm income earned in high-profile events that will call for very large attendances to break even, let alone make a lasting profit.

I understand that the ORC has set a deadline early in February next year for the final go-ahead for the stadium. I urge the people of Otago to think very carefully before committing the ORC funding for this project. There are other more obvious avenues of spending within the mission statement that deserve much higher priority in the interests of us all.

Jolyon Manning is a retired chief executive of the former Otago Council Inc. He lives in Alexandra.

ODT Online, 23 Oct 2008

The economic crisis is beginning to affect the construction of new stadiums in America.

Stadium construction has so far been stopped at three sites, the new Florida Marlins stadium, the New Jersey Nets Arena in Brooklyn and the Nets Baseball stadium in Queens. The new Yankee stadium in New York is in bad financial troubles.

This is only the beginning. Hopefully the beginning of the end for Dunedin too.

» Read the entry here

Opinion, Otago Daily Times, 25 Oct 2008

We live in alarming financial times, as sharemarkets bump their way to new lows and the New Zealand dollar lurches downwards… Nobody knows what comes next and the good times, at the very least for now, have stopped rolling.

On current trajectories, the impact will be felt far and wide, with unemployment rising and standards of living falling. More businesses are likely to fail or downsize. Many are already considering cost-cutting options. This is what faces not just our Government, but also our civic leadership.

How are our elected councillors and our council bureaucracies going to react? What leadership will they provide as they respond to the growing crisis? Conventional wisdom dictates that governments reject the retrenchment that marked the Depression of the 1930s, and which is widely blamed for the length and depth of that local and international disaster….

Local councils are placed differently because many ratepayers will be under increased financial pressure just to pay the rates. Both rates and council debts have, in most places, galloped ahead of inflation for all sorts of reasons, a trend which cannot keep going. In Otago, the Dunedin City Council’s predicament is particularly stark, with an avalanche of increased debt weighing down on the city’s future and - through mounting debt servicing costs - also on present ratepayers.

The city’s finance head, Athol Stephens, has prudently warned that, in the face of volatility, major city projects may need to be reconsidered. Tellingly, these comments were made before the jolt he must have received when he ran into problems last week with a 90-day debt-repayment agreement.

The city is due to borrow $92.8 million this financial year, for the stadium, the West Taieri and northern water schemes, the Tahuna wastewater scheme, and the Otago Settlers Museum.

…Dunedin’s mayor, councillors and senior executives urgently have to reprioritise capital spending, as well as thoroughly examine costs across all council departments.

It becomes a case of not what is desirable, but what is absolutely necessary. Priority has to be given to the basics, including fundamental infrastructure such as water and sewerage and the essential maintenance of roads so that more costly repairs are not required later….

As Dunedin’s debt grows, it also faces a credit rating downgrade, albeit small, which means the interest rate it has to pay on debts will rise. At the same time, income from the council-owned companies - which are used to subsidise rates - can be expected to decrease because they will not be immune from recession.

Dunedin has no realistic choice other than to cut its cloth to match its current circumstances.

» Read the full article here

Letter to the Editor, Otago Daily Times, 24 Oct 2008

IT WAS reported in the Otago Daily Times 11th Oct that City Treasurer Athol Stephens, as he does every two weeks, waved a promissory note for $26 million in front of four big banks and surprise surprise, none of them were interested. He wanted the money so he could roll over some of the city’s debt. He managed to overcome the problem by agreeing to a higher rate of interest. How much higher we don’t know, suffice to say it is an added cost to the empire.

Now, when we are staring down the barrel at some $660 million of debt between the DCC and DCHL you would have to wonder what chance there is of keeping a lid on this simmering caldron. First, cut back seriously on spending so the debt doesn’t actually reach the full level. Stadiums, harbourside dreams and conference venues should slide down the priority pole so fast that they ignite. Go back and revisit the whole budgeting process, prune all non essentials and review all spending. Too much to hope for? Probably.

Calvin Oaten
Pine Hill

Opinion, Otago Daily Times, 24 Oct 2008

The benefits of a new stadium would extend well beyond sport and the university. The venture is about opening up positive opportunities for our future and catapulting Dunedin right back to the front of the pack by playing to our strengths, argues David Gerrard.

When I visualise the new Otago Stadium in 2012, I see a lively, dynamic arena that will serve the whole of the region south of the Waitaki.

I see it primarily as a hub for tertiary education, the community, sport and entertainment.

The stadium will become a magnet for activities, including health and physical activity programmes, rehabilitation, research and technology, as well as providing leading sports medicine facilities, a conferencing venue and a world-class sports arena….

In a current climate of economic downturn, Dunedin and the region deserves an injection of innovative, positive thinking…

From a rugby point of view this development is vital. The cost of losing test and Super 14 rugby to this region is huge.

In economic terms, the last international was estimated to have generated $7.3 million in direct value. But more than the dollars and cents contribution, the new stadium will have a significant role-modelling benefit, give access for young people to top-class sport and provide publicity and brand promotion around the world via broadcasting of significant value to Dunedin and Otago….

The new stadium is about progress, community good, future-proofing, and leaving an outstanding legacy facility….

It is about opening up positive opportunities for our future and catapulting Dunedin right back to the front of the pack by playing to our strengths.

David Gerrard is Associate Professor and Associate Dean, Faculty of Medicine, University of Otago.

» Read more…

» See also:
Staring down the barrel of debt
Question mark over Dunedin’s financial future
Credit crunch hits DCC request for $26m
Council says it had to dip into reserves

Letter to the Editor, Otago Daily Times, 14 Oct 2008

The editorial (7.10.08) looking at the health of Otago rugby was interesting but unfortunately did not address the main issues facing this business. Professional rugby continues to present itself as a sport, while in reality it is part of the entertainment business and that is how it should be assessed. Any other business in this sector - think of a company or theatre players, for example - survives or fails on the audience it attracts.

Professional rugby chooses to live entirely outside of its ability to support itself. Attendance figures are not released by the Otago Rugby Football Union but anyone can make the simple calculations that reveal the gate takings cannot pay the bills. A cursory glance of the grants made by pub charities reveal that the ORFU, either direetly or indirectly, has been in receipt of many hundreds of thousands of dollars from these sources alone.

The city still supports the ORFU by failing to insist the current overdue loan of $2 million is repaid. Worse still, the city and region intend backing a business that has shown itself to be incapable of running itself for years by building it a new stadium. Is it not time that full public disclosures are made of the financial situation of the ORFU, including the amounts received directly or indirectly from gaming trusts, the income received from gate takings, outstanding loans, land ownership etc? If not, then allow the ORFU to survive in exactly the same way any other member of the entertainment business has to without community subsidies and handouts.

Russell Garbutt
Dunedin

Related:
» NZRU get back in black
» Crowds hit new lows

It’ll be all over by October

Apart from the fact that this statement, (a summing-up of current World finances as seen by a recent contributor to this web-site), has a poetic ring about it, it hasn’t really got a great deal going for it. Moreover, it flies in the face of history, and of history as Winston Churchill once reminded us, ‘Those who ignore its lessons, are fated to repeat them’, or words to that effect. The sad thing is that, for each generation, those same lessons go unheeded.

The massive production-capacity of United States industry provided the nuts-and-bolts of, if not both World Wars, at least World War Two. Assistance to the allies from ‘Marshall Aid’ saw huge American resources ploughed into arms production, technology and development, so America, with its shores only marginally threatened, was a ‘powerhouse’ behind the war-effort. American industry mobilised as never before. One by-product of this was that ‘Her-indoors’ abandoned her traditional post at the kitchen sink and happily operated a lathe manufacturing shell-cases, carried out delivery flights of aircraft or sold ‘War-bonds’.

At the cessation of hostilities, the last thing American industry wanted was the return of all those Jeeps, tanks and aircraft ‘back-home’, so they were taken out to sea, particularly in the Pacific and pushed overboard to disfigure previously pristine coral reefs with their rusting remains. So, America is no stranger to waste on a colossal scale, as long as someone is making obscene amounts of money out of it and most of those good ‘God-fearing, down- home folks’ find life to be, perceptibly, on the uphill side of ‘bearable’.

There was the salutary lesson of the Great Depression, which started in 1928. The plight of the ‘Okies’ during the hard-times which followed, those who had to walk off their farms in the Oklahoma Dust-bowl and migrate to California in search of work, has been well-enough documented. John Steinback’s 1942 novel ‘The Grapes of Wrath’, brought it all into focus, and if not the book, the film publicised it. The huge surge of industry during World-War II brought new prosperity in its wake. American-sponsored adoption of the ‘Deeming’ principles of industrial quality-control by Japan in the years following WW2, awakened a second force to be reckoned with industry-wise, which is why names such as ‘Canon’, ‘Komatsu’, ‘Fujitsu’, ‘Sony’ and so-on are household names today. Toyota, which began production with an undistinguished, but reliable little vehicle known as the ‘Toyopet’, is another success-story and others such as ‘Honda’, ‘Yamaha’, ‘Kawasaki’ et-al, followed-suit. The ‘British Empire’ at last, had its comeuppance and found itself relegated to a back seat in world affairs.

There had always been huge corporations, because of the scale on which everything was done. In the aircraft industry, always at the forefront of most developments in the 30’s and 40’s, firms, which had started as one-man affairs, became subject to takeover and absorption by their rivals. The aircraft company Fairchild, as an example, had been started initially, not as an aircraft company at all. Sherman Fairchild’s team had designed a most successful camera for aerial photography, but there was no aircraft available which was really suitable for it to be employed to advantage; so Fairchild management co-opted people with knowledge of aircraft design and built the FC-1, soon to be followed by the FC-2, the reliable and almost indestructible workhorse of choice for Canadian and Alaskan ‘bush-pilots’. Through WW2 and the ‘Vietnam’ era, the Fairchild concern continued with aircraft development up to the ‘Thunderbolt II’, a straight-out military weapon with awesome powers of destruction.

The Orson Welles movie ‘Citizen Kane’ was one of the first indications that the American dream might eventually collapse on itself and go rotten-at-the-core, ‘Enron-wise’. Behind the ‘God-fearing’ facade, ‘Andrews Sisters’ and many other things rather irritatingly ‘American’, ruthless Corporations began to amass unto themselves, great wealth. With wealth, came the power to buy influence. The much-lauded Kennedy dynasty was a case-in-point. From Joseph Kennedy’s origins with a finger in just about every shady deal ‘going’, through a more-than-nodding acquaintance with the American ‘Mafia’ plus ambitions to see an Irish-Catholic President of the US, (J.F.K.’s older brother ‘Joe Junior’ fell-by-the-wayside during the race), the American political landscape metamorphosed its way through numerous changes.

America has always prided itself as the ‘Land of Opportunity’, based upon the Abraham Lincoln progression from ‘Log cabin, to White House’. In the eyes of many Americans, anyone could be President; conveniently overlooking the fact, of course, that not many of them would have been able to stump-up with the millions of dollars needed to mount a campaign, so would have faltered at the first hurdle. Hand in hand with ‘opportunity’ goes ‘competition’. As in many other countries, the man who tilled-the-soil found himself left out-in-the cold. Instead, it was the ‘smart-operator’, the finance-trader, those of the ostentatious lifestyle and glitzy image which High School graduates aspired to emulate, especially if had they proven to be ‘capable-with-figures’ or, in this age, computer-savvy.

The American people are good-savers by our standards, and the ratio of home-ownership is comparatively high. With expanding Hispanic and Asian populations fuelling the need for more construction, competition began between banks for business. With agents probably on commission as an aid to incentive, the rules governing sound-practice began to be circumvented. Whereas, previously, there had been established benchmarks as to deposits required as a precursor to the granting of mortgages, sharp-operators began to find short- cuts, leading to increasing levels of credit being extended to those with only marginal prospects for repayment. It’s like blowing-up a balloon. You watch it expand, ever larger, you wait in anticipation, then suddenly, it’s just pieces of fragmented rubber lying on the floor.

It could be argued that, with the knowledge of the ‘Great Depression’ of the 1930’s to draw upon, we should have been forewarned this time around. It has been said that had the American-in-the-street kept his nerve in 1928-29, and unsubstantiated rumour not brought about ‘runs-on-the-banks’ which cleaned them out, (thereby fuelling the very situation which depositors were trying to avoid), the effects might not have reverberated World-wide and the worst of the Great Depression might have been contained. The misery spread around the globe. I can remember my parents telling me of once comfortably-off friends having to peddle writing-pads and light-bulbs door-to-door to try and make ends meet, (a reflection of family-sizes in those days, possibly). For single-men, it was the ‘Public Works Camps’ and ‘Works’ schemes such as the Homer Tunnel, which compounded the seeming pointlessness of day-to-day existence. I recall vividly, a tale recounted to me by one of our near neighbours, when I was growing up in rural South Otago; that of a team of workers returning, on foot, to their work-place on the Ball-Hut road in Mt Cook National Park being caught-out in a sudden snow-storm while only lightly-clad, with the attempts of the fitter and more-able to keep the flagging members awake to avoid probable death through hypothermia and, especially, the need to keep a lookout for the ‘silly-look’ some got on their faces as a precursor to wandering off-track into the blizzard.

While my knowledge of history might be incomplete, I feel there is much of relevance to the Stadium debate in this brief recounting of ‘background’. That is because, with loans of the magnitude required to build the Awatea St Stadium, recourse to International finance will likely be necessary. Even if raised from New Zealand sources, the influence of the International finance community cannot be disregarded, as New Zealand is heavily beholden to those ‘Belgian Dentist and Japanese Housewife’ investors from overseas. In New Zealand the ‘contraction’ has already begun as banks and others who extend credit take the perfectly logical and prudent step of ensuring their own preservation. The first shock waves are with us even now; job offers for students over their summer break from tertiary studies are away down on last year when candidates were able to pick through what was on-offer. There are other ‘barometers’, an anticipated drop in tourist-numbers, likely fewer cruise-ships, small businesses not taking-on extra staff due to uncertainty of on-going employment. Dairying has passed its own point-of inflexion, with milk-fat payments heading downwards. Just when more opportunistic would-be cow-cockies than ever are partway through the ‘conversions’, which will enable them, participate in what they see as ‘their share’ of the new bonanza, cheques might not reach their unrealistic expectations for the first time since Fonterra entered the picture.

Against the background of all this, we press-on with our dream, or should that be our delusion, of a stadium. At the outset, I mentioned the ‘lessons of history’, and if ever we are to have to heed them to our advantage, that time would have to be right-now. There’s no real ‘doom-and-gloom’ about it, nor would I wish to rain on anyone’s parade. The message is simple. We have just undergone a boom period fuelled, it could be said, by the availability of almost unlimited easy-credit. Until just months ago, trite and infinitely boring ‘Real-Estate’ programmes on TV were showing us, ad nauseum, how to become our very own ‘do-it-yourself’ property-tycoons, by risky practices better known to Aucklanders than most of the rest of us. The chains of dominoes brought into being by leveraging off existing property equity to add to growing ‘portfolios’ will soon have even less appeal than property development driven only by considerations of self-enrichment, with no considerations of environment, aesthetics, or the water-tightness of the resulting structures, much less the good-of-humanity. The lasting effects from this, for the non-guilty rest-of-us, are ever-burgeoning rafts of ‘compliances’, requirements and jumpings-through-hoops (adding something like $25,000 to the cost of a quite representative home), because shonky Auckland-based ‘Cowboy’ builders found a bit-more ‘cop’ in taking shortcuts, than coming up with the quality being paid-for.

The poet Keats (or was it Shelley), wrote of a huge derelict statue in the desert wastes with an inscription which read, in part, ‘My name is Ozymandias, King-of-Kings. Look on my works ye mighty and despair’. [Ed.: Read about Shelley's famous poem, Ozymandias, at Wikipedia.] It made an impression on me as a fourth-former, a salutary lesson on the transience of many things we perceive at the time of inception to be permanent. Who would have conceived, as few as thirty years ago, that so many mechanical functions which we (then) took for granted would ever have adapted, so readily, to electronics? Most facets of our existence are in processes of constant change and driven, largely, by a world mass-consumerism fuelled by industry’s constant expansion of what they succeed in convincing us are our ‘needs’. With our increasing appetites for ever-more-novel electronic ‘toys’, (for, in practical terms, they are nothing more), plus the accelerating technology of developments which are needed to satisfy this dance-to-destruction, we are on treadmills of our own making, every bit as pitiable as the mouse which endlessly and pointlessly, ‘treadles’ away ‘flat-out’ but in effect, succeeds in going nowhere.

I strongly suspect that the Stadium, and what is seen as its pressing need, is an outcome of these processes. Much is made of a need for Dunedin’s ‘growth’. Why? ‘Growth’ to most people going about their daily lives means, simply, that there will be more ‘punters’ to have to share our facilities with. Growth, for its own sake, is an illusion, and I would venture, a futile one. Auckland has ‘growth’, as does Brisbane. (I can’t get out of either city quickly enough). Both have ‘sprawl’ in common, requiring driving significant distances for life’s necessities. Here, I am able to drive into the city centre in ten minutes, although invariably I travel only half-way or so, and walk the rest of the way because of the parking situation and my need for exercise. We have a city, which is, by any standards, a desirable place to live, in my opinion. It is situated on the edge of a harbour obligingly blasted-out for us aeons ago by an extinct volcano, which, just as a matter of interest, the Stadium stands to be plonked right on top of. We have, to my way of thinking, much to be thankful for. In the immortal words of ‘Fred Dagg’ of years past, ‘We don’t know how lucky, we are’. So, what do we do about it, drop to our knees and give thanks? Of course not, we pick our way through the failed systems, vanity-projects, social-inequalities and other problems of cities which we aspire to emulate solely on the basis of their greater populations, then foolishly attempt to be as much like them as possible. We are not going to be another ‘Auckland’, let’s get used to it. Wellington may have its ‘Absolutely, positively….’ pitch going for it, but it’s central geographically, as such, probably ideal for the conferences we so covet for ourselves. Let’s not over-estimate the pulling-power of Albatrosses (Albatri) seen at great distance by people struggling to stand upright in gales at Taiaroa Head, or disillusioned Asian tourists trudging back from Sandfly Bay on the Peninsula, disappointed that they didn’t get that digital-photograph which they so craved, the one standing arm-in-flipper with a yellow-eyed penguin. Much has been made of Wellington’s ‘Cake-Tin’ and its success; but I understand that, behind the scenes, pickings would be slim without the periodic staging of the ‘Rugby World Sevens’ to assure full-houses over just the single, well-patronised weekend.

There is something of the ‘Sky-tower’ about our own proposal. It appeals to me as ‘The Sky-tower we never had’ or even ‘Aramoana Revisited’. But then, why would we want one? Towers strike me as being the ultimate ‘meaningless-statement’; illogical, proof-of-nothing, empty of meaning. I maintain, you wouldn’t empty out the city’s coffers and ignore the welfare of the population-at-large in an all-or-nothing, totally meaningless, display of an irrelevance. Or, would you?

So, what is the ‘engine’ driving the Awatea St proposal? Maybe I associate with the ‘wrong’ people as, from many dozens I have spoken to, wholehearted supporters (as opposed to the ‘antis’ and ‘don’t knows’), could just about be numbered on one hand. In that case, I have my own suspicions about the ‘right’ people, and even more so, their motivation. Is it, as I suspect, that, up-to-a-point, attitudes on both sides have hardened, with retraction from the initial burst of enthusiasm generated at time the scheme was being painted for us in glowing colours, perceived as ‘weakness’? There seem to be entrenched attitudes on both sides and the last place I would be looking for objectivity, right-now, is amongst the ranks of our city councillors, some of whom, I suspect, have been well and truly ‘on-board’ from the outset and will do all they can to bring about this meaningless and futile ‘gesture’, for it is being seen increasingly, I am convinced, as nothing more.

For, at a time when we are being warned on a personal front, that we should ‘spread-our-risks’ investment-wise by diversifying our personal wealth, such as it is, the city fathers seem hell-bent on taking us in the opposite direction of ‘all eggs in one basket’. If ever there was an action that could ‘turn on us and bite our bum(s)’, it is taking place right now, and no platitudes, ingratiation, sham public-consultation, ‘schmoozing’ or glowing enthusiasm in ‘City-Talk’, will convince me otherwise.
Because, to proceed with this scheme beyond its present state of development, is to ignore some weighty lessons of history………and we do that at our ultimate peril, as Churchill so tellingly observed.