Opinion: How to blow $33m city council style

An artist's impression of Te Kaha. Image / Supplied

OPINION:

I can’t believe the Christchurch City Council.

Just weeks after causing a huge outcry with its announcement that it wants to spend $33 million upgrading the streets around the site of the new stadium, Te Kaha, it’s decided behind closed doors to press on.

Let me remind you exactly how nuts this whole thing is.

It wants to take away dozens of car parks - 49 to be precise. There are 72, it wants to get rid of 49 and keep 23. But that’s not all.

The council also wants to widen footpaths on some streets to nearly 6m, put in more cycleways and lower the speed limit to as low as 10km/h.

When the council announced this daft plan, businesses in the area weren’t happy about it - especially the idea of getting rid of dozens of car parks.

Annabel Turley from the Central City Business Association said people still come into town in cars and they need to be catered for.

Something else the town planners at the council don’t seem to have thought about is Christchurch’s famous easterly, because they’ve got this nutbar idea of taking away car parks on Lichfield St so the footpath can be widened to nearly 6m for outdoor dining.

But as Turley says, that’s the last place you’d want to sit outside and eat, because of the easterly wind, which does its thing more often than not. Pretty much everywhere.

But the thing I’m probably most confused about is I thought mayor Phil Mauger had managed to get this whole thing stopped. That’s what was reported a few weeks back.

And I thought that was great and I congratulated him at the time. As he’s been saying, this work should only be done when the city can afford it and when it is a real priority.

And Mauger is bang on when he says that if the council wants to spend $33m, it should be going into the stadium first. Because let’s not forget the massive funding shortfall that the council is still trying to get its head around.

This money shouldn’t be going into beautifying the area when the stadium is still years away: April 2026 it’s due to be completed.

But, oh no, we had a behind-closed-doors briefing for city councillors on Tuesday and today the council has come out and said “it’s all back on folks”.

Spending $33m beautifying the area when, at the moment, the stadium site is still pretty much a piece of dirt. It’s all back on!

Pouring money into widening footpaths, taking away car parks and slowing traffic down to 10km per hour. It’s all back on!

The council thinks that by getting on with this work sooner rather than later, it won’t have to spend money on expensive traffic management plans when big events are held at the stadium.

That’ll be because - if the council gets its way - there’ll be no car parks and traffic will be crawling along at 10km/h.

But let’s not forget how often that’s going to happen. As it stands, there’s probably going to be about one major event per month at the stadium. The rest of the time we’ll be having an even harder time trying to find somewhere to park in town and we’ll be crawling around the place at 10km/h.

But the council, in its wisdom, wants to blow $33m under the guise that it will save money in the long run. I don’t buy that for a minute.

And, not that long ago, Mauger wasn’t buying it either and was saying that the council needed to cut its cloth to suit its budget.

But, despite all that, it seems that council staff have done a brilliant job convincing councillors otherwise and, as a result, the council has decided not to pull the plug - and the consultation process is up and running again.

That will run until the end of the month, then the matter will go to a hearings panel in February.

As I say, it beggars belief. It beggared belief when they first announced it and it beggars belief, even more, when you’ve got the mayor against it, you’ve got the business association against it and you’ve got ratepayers against it.