KEY POINTS:
What a right bugger's muddle, said one exasperated Auckland City councillor after last week's decision - in secret - to postpone any decision on the fate of the Q Theatre project for another fortnight.
Not helping is that participants are not supposed to be even discussing what went on, because the key new issue - an offer from the Lotteries Commission to grant in principle all but $500,000 of the $6.5 million applied for - is hush-hush.
Apparently the Lotteries Significant Project Fund chairwoman, one-time Labour Cabinet minister Margaret Shields, wants any announcement to come from Wellington.
Which, with an election looming, is understandable.
So why all the dithering by councillors? A major cause is the fish hooks the Shields committee has embedded into the grant. It wants a written undertaking from Auckland City that it will make an annual contribution of at least $400,000 to the completed facility's running costs, even though ACC had previously insisted its maximum was $300,000.
That's on top of the $9.2 million the city has already pledged to the $21 million project.
In a strange move, Lotteries is also saying that the $6 million is conditional on the Auckland Theatre Company, which doesn't see the little Q Theatre as the answer to its problems, pledging in writing its "commitment" to the project.
Instead of being left to lick its wounds in private, ATC is being bullied into publicly conceding defeat AND swearing allegiance to Q.
To complicate issues further, ACC bureaucrats are refusing to let councillors see the draught copy of the study into CBD venue needs, commissioned by the council at politicians' insistence from Horwath International in March, and delivered to the bureaucracy weeks ago.
The cynical view is that the bureaucrats don't like what it says. Not even arts and culture committee chairman Greg Moyle, a supporter of Q, was allowed to see the report before the meeting. To this outsider, it seems bizarre that the bureaucracy could put this issue before councillors last week while withholding the report that is supposed to guide their decision-making. Only at the Auckland City Council.
Also of concern among councillors is that ratepayers will have to pay depreciation costs in years to come, even though the theatre is to be run as an independent trust.
Muzzled by Lotteries' $6 million gag, no one is prepared to openly discuss the issue. All ATC general manager Lester McGrath will say is his board can make no decisions until it sees the venue study.
"ATC's venue needs are real and pressing and we have an uncertain future in the medium to long-term with all the venues we currently use," he said.
As it stands, after a 10-year struggle, backers of the 350- to 450-seater Q Theatre are, thanks to Lotteries' surprise beneficence, sniffing victory. Most of the other money does come from ACC or ASB Trust pledges.
But there has been a push by ATC, supported by the council's Edge arts and convention complex, that a better use of public money would be to build a multi-theatre complex incorporating a Q-type theatre with a 550-seat drama theatre.
Leader of the citizens and ratepayers majority David Hay leans to this solution. His citrat colleague, Mr Moyle, does not. He talks of grabbing "the bird in the hand", and then dealing with ATC's requirements next. "I don't believe we're going to get a magic bullet. It's got to be planned for and I don't think ATC have really embraced that yet."
Citrat's Toni Millar and Labour and City Vision councillors tend to agree.
Mrs Shields has given ATC, ACC and Q until September 30 to come to an agreement they can all live with. The ideal solution would be for the council, Lotteries and ASB Trusts to commit to carrying their pledges over to the multi-theatre complex the region so desperately needs, and commit to a timetable.
Mr Moyle backs planning stage 2, once Q is started. But some of us remember a solemn commitment to build a stage 2 theatre complex at Aotea Centre 20 years ago. It is, indeed, a bugger's muddle.
