KEY POINTS:
The final nail has been hammered into the coffin of the $23.5 million waterfront museum in Tauranga.
The city council is now in talks with staff about their jobs and private funders about refunding donations.
The museum's resource consent application has been pulled by consulting firm Beca at the request of city council chief executive Stephen Town following talks with Tauranga Mayor Stuart Crosby.
The decision comes after a turbulent weekend in which candidates opposing the construction of a museum-on-a-pier opposite the Westpac building were swept into power at the expense of those in favour of the contentious project.
Mr Crosby said withdrawing the resource consent application was the right thing to do in the "current environment" of the new council.
He said he had the authority to stop the consent process and that because of the make-up of the new council, continuing with the application could be deemed a waste of money.
A motion that all expenditure on the waterfront museum be stopped is expected to be moved at the first full council meeting on November 5 and will quite clearly succeed, Mayor Crosby said.
The plan had been for the resource consent process to be completed by February and if approved, and 50 per cent of the funding had been secured for the museum, then the project would have gone out for public consultation in March.
Councillors would have taken a final vote in June and if approved the museum was expected to open in 2011.
But the council has been swift to stop the waterfront museum in its tracks since the election.
Auckland-based designer Jasmax, which designed Te Papa and had the contract for Tauranga Museum, has been told to stop work, as has Beca - which carried out the geotechnical investigations for the proposed site and submitted the resource consent.
Talks have also been held with the museum's five fulltime workers and one part-time worker.
The ratepayer-funded budget for salaries for this year was $427,000 and was for seven fulltime staff and one part-time, though two of the positions were not filled.
Mr Town said it was awkward to talk about employees but said their future was "bleak".
Talks were also being held with museum establishment director Neil Anderson and an announcement would be made about his future.
Mr Town said the majority of the salary budget went on ensuring the cataloguing and care of the museum collection, which is in a storage facility in Newton St, Mt Maunganui.
He said it was a sensible decision to stop the resource consent given that so many councillors had publicly opposed the waterfront museum.
- Bay of Plenty Times
