Napier mayor Bill Dalton 'reluctantly' supports war memorial plan

A new proposal will be designed for the war memorial, with NCC confirming the brief at a meeting on Tuesday. Photo / File

Napier mayor Bill Dalton has "reluctantly" changed his vote on Napier's controversial war memorial.

Napier City councillors voted to tender out the design option for the war memorial at a full council meeting on Tuesday.

It follows a decision made at the Strategy and Infrastructure Committee meeting in February, to come up with a new design incorporating the three designs that went to consultation.

At that meeting, Dalton was the only one to vote against the proposal.

On Tuesday he said the proposal was now in a form he could accept, but he did so with some reluctance.

"We went out with three options and twice as many submitters supported the garden, or landscape option, as supported the next most popular option."

"The public preferred the garden option but council is clearly of a mind to deliver them something else."

Napier Mayor Bill Dalton said he supports the proposal but "reluctantly". Photo / File

Councillor Annette Brosnan, who proposed the new design, said she looked at the submissions beyond simply the numbers voting for each option.

She said some of the reasons people did not like the garden option was because it felt removed from the rest of the site, whereas people who liked the forecourt option like it's connectivity.

"If you looked purely at the numbers around those who supported, for example the forecourt option, then you would say, do we have community support for a forecourt level design.

"I have gone deeper than that and looked at the content of the comments, and what they are trying to achieve."

Councillor Kirsten Wise, who seconded the motion, said it was a huge step forward in gaining the trust of the Napier community.

"I think it's a huge step forward in the way that we are engaging with our community."

She said while the design as a whole had not been costed, most of the individual components had been. She felt confident the budget of $1.5 million was more than adequate.

Councillor Annette Brosnan, who has worked through the submissions to come up with a community-led brief to give to designers. Photo / File

Councillor Graeme Taylor said since the decision to relocate the roll of honour and perpetual flame there had been numerous "skirmishes and battles," in regards to the war memorial.

He said Brosnan had formulated a community-led design following the submission process.

While the final design is being tendered out for completion, the brief states the memorial will be on the floral clock site, on the forecourt of the War Memorial Centre site.

The roll of honour will be connected to the building, in a curved wall.

The perpetual flame will be part of the centre's entrance.