Club prepared to pay $90,000

Summer Cycling Carnival race director Ivan Aplin (right) and Ramblers Cycling Club member with traffic management supervisor Tony Hartley, pictured getting the winner and placegetter podiums ready for the opening events. Photo / Duncan Brown

The Ramblers Cycling Club (RCC) is putting $90,000 toward the Napier City Council's proposed multipurpose facility.

The project is set to include a velodrome - of which the club is in "150 per cent" support.

According to the Hawke's Bay Velodrome Indicative Business Case penned by the Giblin Group and released almost a year ago, the club will contribute the money to the facility if it goes ahead, pending approval from its members.

According to the group's Revenue Generation Strategy, Ramblers is putting 1 per cent towards the facility's capital funding.

With membership coming in at 300, according to the Ramblers' website, that means $300 per member.

Ramblers club member Ivan Aplin said the club was supporting the multipurpose facility financially, using monies initially raised for the failed bid for an indoor centre for cycling at the Hawke's Bay Regional Sports Park.

"We had $100,000 and off the top of my head something like $10,000 we put in to help cover the cost of the tender to show our commitment to it," he said.

"Then there was about $90,000 left but I thought we had added to it."

Council project manager Geoff Balme said vision for the proposed multiuse-velodrome was for it to be an outstanding nationally recognised community facility that maximises club and community use.

Mr Aplin said it would make a huge difference if the club had some sort of ownership of the facility, feel it was their "clubroom".

"I won't say ownership in financial terms but ownership in terms of if it feels like our home than the volunteers get in and do the repairs," he said.

Napier mayor Bill Dalton said the support showed Ramblers was a progressive club wanting to see the sport of cycling move forward in the Bay.

"You can rest assured that if the velodrome goes ahead we would be delighted to take any donations from anyone," he said.

Mr Dalton added the project would go ahead only if the council's business case, being undertaken now, went ahead.

Napier City Council chief executive Wayne Jack is a member of the Ramblers club but Mr Dalton ruled out any conflict of interest.

"Wayne Jack is a ordinary member and has no influence over the management of Ramblers cycle club," Mr Dalton said.

"He has no influence over their management decisions nor do they have any influence over any decisions that Wayne would make."

He said at the end of the day if being a member was a conflict then no one could ever work for a local authority or become a councillor or a mayor.

"I don't see that Wayne has the slightest conflict whatsoever in being a member of a cycling club."