Velodrome needs $3m from people

Napier Mayor Bill Dalton.

Napier City Council are now asking regional ratepayers to stump up $3 million of the $15 million needed to build the proposed multipurpose velodrome.

It has previously been reported that funding from the regional council, originally placed at $2 million, was critical to the project.

Now the latest figures, released by the council's chief executive Wayne Jack, note that local government is being asked to front $8 million - $5 million of which will come from the city council - for the initial build of the project.

However, Napier Mayor Bill Dalton said the $3 million was just one of many options that the council was looking into as to where it would source the funding as they work through the business case.

"And while we work through the process all options are open to us," he said.

He said that the council was absolutely open to this project on the basis that they want to see whether this project is worth pursuing.

"Nobody is committed to it, we are committed to doing a business case and we will discuss it when we have got the result of that business case," he said "Let us do our work, let us do what we need to do to prove whether this process or this project is viable or not."

When asked when the $500,000 business case was likely to be concluded, Mr Dalton said "as soon as we can".

"We put no time limits on this," he said.

The mayor assured that the ratepayers' money was going nowhere until the business case was concluded on the multipurpose facility.

Hawke's Bay Regional Council chairman Fenton Wilson said the regional council has invited Napier council to present its case at its next corporate and strategic committee meeting on February 17.

"I don't know enough to comment but suffice to say I am really interested in hearing what their proposal is," he said.