City council fast tracks Southland Museum's $9.5m redevelopment
Tuesday, 15 May 2018
The Invercargill City Council has agreed to fast-track a $9.5 million Southland Museum redevelopment in the next five years.
The decision made by elected members at a council meeting on Tuesday night came after a 1000 signature petition was handed to Mayor Tim Shadbolt asking for the now closed museum to be reopened in its current form.
Also, two councillors questioned whether the council had been hasty in closing it in the first place.
The elected council members made funding decisions on a raft of major projects in the council's 2018-28 long term plan, with the meeting lasting three hours.
The museum decision was arguably the biggest of them all, given the Southland Museum and Art Gallery was closed last month due to safety concerns.
Its closure has resulted in anger and disbelief from some quarters, as evidenced by about 40 protesters who made their feelings known outside the council building before cramming inside to hear the debate.
Councillors decided the city needed a museum sooner rather than later, so voted to spend $9.5m on the project in the next five years instead of the earlier 10 year timeframe.
The $9.5m will be spent in two lots - $2.5m in 2021-22 and the balance of $7m in 2022-23.
The council also decided to fork out an additional $200,000 each year for four years for an interim museum presence in the city, and grant $9m for a regional storage facility in 2024-25.
Cr Karen Arnold voted against the extra $200,000 funding for each of the four years.
Before the council's decision, Mary Campbell spoke in the public forum and handed over a 1010 signature petition asking the council to reopen the now closed museum.
Buildings on Dee Street were far more dangerous than the museum building, she said.
'People are utterly outraged about the totally ludicrous decision to close the museum … why not put a sign on the door and say enter at your own risk like they have done at Gore District Council?'
Nobby Clark, spokesman for the Invercargill Ratepayers Advocacy Group with 'decades' of experience as a health and safety inspector, also wanted it reopened.
He questioned why council chief executive Clare Hadley did not seek a WorkSafe NZ investigation into the safety of working in the museum before closing it.
Councillors had allowed the museum to be closed based on the views of Hadley and her report which raised no specifically identified safety concerns other than the earthquake prone building status, he said.
Lindsay Buckingham, with four decades experience in the engineering and construction industry, told councillors the building act did not require building owners to close their buildings once they were deemed earthquake prone, but a notice had to be displayed on the door for the public to make its own mind up about entering.
'If the rest of the country followed the example shown by the ICC then about 25,000 buildings in New Zealand which are potentially or have been identified as earthquake prone, should be closed immediately.'
This was clearly not the intent of the earthquake prone building amendments to the building act, nor the health and safety at work act, he said.
Two city councillors later questioned the council's earlier decision to close it.
Cr Lindsay Abbott highlighted the Gore District Council decision to keep its building open and wondered if the city council had been too 'hasty'.
Cr Allan Arnold questioned if there was a 'feeling' around the table to look at reopening the museum, and suggested the council get some legal clarification around its decision.
Other major decisions made at the meeting were:
- Allocate a one-off grant of $300,000 for the funding of Stadium Southland in 2018-19 and work with the stadium trust to look at other ways of funding the shortfall in future.
- Construct an art centre in 2021-22, at a cost of $16m, with the council to meet $6.3m of this. The project will be loan funded from this year.
- Construct the Living Dinosaurs Experience, to consist of tuatara and a Kakapo chick rearing facility, in 2019-20 at a cost of $5m, with the council to meet $2.5m of this, to be loan funded.
- Develop an alternative water supply beginning in 2025-26, at estimated cost of $10.7m. To be loan funded.
- Earthquake strengthen Anderson House to 67 per cent of the new building standard at estimated cost of $1.72m, to be loan funded from 2019-20.
- Build an additional pool at Splash Palace, but delay the project until 2023-24 to allow for other projects like the museum to begin sooner. The initial estimated cost was $6.4m but this may change.
The rates increase for 2018-19 will be 4.91 per cent - nearly 1 per cent higher than earlier predicted, and rates increases in the following nine years are yet to be confirmed.