Botanic Gardens Delight

The Upper Gardens are wonderful just now with the Magnolia's in full bloom and the Rhododendrons beginning to bloom, and the settled Spring weather allowing them to show their best.

ORC Drops Ball On Buses

Otago Regional Council chief executive, Graeme Martin, says that Dunedin bus services were a hospital pass but it is more accurate to say that the ORC has dropped the ball. Expenses have been allowed to increase so much that fares now only cover 35% of costs, much less than the 50% required as a condition of Government subsidies. Cuts in bus services and more fare increases will be difficult to avoid.
There has been some increase in patronage , but most of this is due to older people traveling free with their Super-Gold cards (The Government pays their fares).
The Regional Council has not explained why costs have increased so much. Only a small part can be attributed to an increase in services. The main reason is probably new requirements for high-tech buses: "raising standards". But the end consequence may be to lose passengers because of the resulting higher fares.
The full Regional Council document can be found here

	Contract	Subsidy per	Patronage	Fare
	Costs ($)	passenger		revenue ($)
2001/02	932,533	$0.68	1,376,755	1,737,205
2002/03	866,492	$0.63	1,381,760	1,781,244
2003/04	901,937	$0.64	1,403,758	1,890,465
2004/05	1,055,725	$0.88	1,195,783	1,659,990
2005/06	1,931,483	$1.49	1,292,458	1,802,223
2006/07	2,154,129	$1.65	1,305,121	2,005,873
2007/08	3,113,891	$2.17	1,437,341	2,093,360
2008/09	4,823,951	$2.92	1,651,878	2,581,122

Auckland Events Lose Millions

The Dunedin City Council has appointed directors for Dunedin Venues Management Limited, the company which will manage the Stadium. The board will be chaired by Sir John Hansen, a former Judge, who has little business experience and seems to have been appointed to give a respectable facade. Many of the finance companies which have failed in recent times, have had this type of appointment on their board.
The deputy-chairman of DVML will be Peter Stubbs, who is chairman of The Edge, which manages the venues of the Auckland City Council. He certainly knows about the risks of event management: The Edge lost $1.9 million promoting My Fair Lady in August. This is even more than the $1.8 million Auckland Regional Council lost on David Beckham.
The other DVML directors are Stewart Barnett, Bill Baylis, Peter Brown, Malcolm Farry, Peter Hutchison, Jennifer Rolfe and Kereyn Smith. There can be little complaint about the calibre of those chosen.
But event promotion is a risky business, particularly in cities with a low population base such as Dunedin. I think that there should be a public debate on whether DVML should take the risk of event promotion, or it should just hire the venue. I seem to recall Euan Soper, of the Carisbrook Stadium Trust, saying it would just be venue hire.
The ODT story is here.

No Sunday Drive On John Wilson

The Dunedin City Council has changed it's mind again and decided John Wilson Drive will only be open to vehicles on weekdays (story in the ODT here). This is described as a "compromise" between those who want it reopened and those who want it open to walkers only. But it hard to disagree with Councillor John Bezett who said, "This to me is trying to please everybody. We are going to end up pleasing no-one".
This decision puts an end to the long tradition of taking elderly and infirm relatives on a Sunday Drive to John Wilson. And those who work for a living will largely miss out.
The Council has lost the plot yet again. I am sure that this decision will be revisited before long.

"Darwin Lives" At Museum

We spent a great evening last night in the Animal Attic at the museum, with Charles Darwin. He was impersonated in a one-man show by Ken Benn, who brought to life Victorian times and the great Evolution controversy between Science and the Church. Darwin's breakthrough was to discern the mechanism of evolution: natural selection. He was influenced by the flora and fauna that he saw on his travels around the world on the Beagle, and his observation of the changes in domestic animals as a result of selective breeding.
Last night's show was $5 with tea and cakes, but there are free shows at other times.The show accompanies the "Charles Darwin: Evolutionary Thinking" exhibition at the museum. 2009 is the year of Darwin and marks a double celebration – not only is it 200 years since the scientist’s birth, but also 150 years since The Origin of Species was first published.
Ken Benn has also impersonated Leonardo da Vinci and Ernest Shackleton, to to accompany their respective exhibitions.

Misleading Recycling Consultation

The Dunedin City Council promotional material for the consultation on Recycling changes (pdf here) features a smiling Solid Waste Manager, Ian Featherston, alongside the various "choices" of recycling bins. Anyone reading this material would expect to have a choice of bins, if the proposed scheme is implemented.
But in the official consultation proposal (pdf here), there is no choice: everyone must use the new 140-litre wheelie-bin, unless they apply and are approved on a "special needs" basis. In fact, the Council recently considered and rejected the suggestion, by Councillor Richard Walls, of giving house-holders a choice of bins (ODT story here).
It will be interesting to see how the Council deals with this apparent blunder, during the consultation process. It will be sensitive to criticism following the Parking fiasco.
I think that that choice of recycling bins would be a good thing because no size will suit everybody. There are thousands of households where a 140-litre wheelie-bin would not be suitable because they have steps or do not have room. Now that the "choice" genie is out of the bottle, it will be hard to put back in again.

Calvin Questions Town Hall Business Plan

A letter from Calvin Oaten to Dscene:

I have read the report by senior manager Kate Styles to councillors on the proposed town hall/conference centre upgrade.
I was not so so much impressed by what it enclosed as by what it did not. It was in effect a synopsis of the more elaborate presentation by the architect consultants Opus Ltd. Ms Styles twice mentions her business case in support of the project. What business case? We don’t know, because she does not elaborate on it. I doubted there was one until I read the latest LTCCP.
It is planned to refurbish the town hall in conjunction with expanding and fitting out the concert chamber and parts of the municipal building in order to
create an international standard conference centre.
The idea was floated at a cost of $14m. It then developed with the controversial Harrop St "glass clip-on", at a revised price of $18.5m. Later it became $29.2m, but at the same time strong opposition over the clip-on brought about a rethink, resulting in a revised design developed more within the building
footprint. However, the estimate of capital, plus costs, are now $51.245m.
Annual expenditure in operating the centre is shown as ranging from $1.679m in 2009/10 to $1.974m in 2011/12, by which time the planned development will be complete. The operating costs then take an incremental leap to $6.727m in 2012/13 and remaining at this} level through the remainder of the LTCCP.
When the cost was at $18.5m, former manager Peter Brown claimed there would be at least an additional six conferences per year for Dunedin, with an expected
economic benefit to the city of around $3m per year. When the project cost moved to $29.2m, Ms Styles said there would be an increase of 16 conferences per year prov1ding an economic benefit of some $16m.
Now that the cost is over $50m, will she explain her business case, explaining how many extra conferences she now plans for, and the empirical evidence to
substantiate her projections?
What would be the the economic benefits now accruing, bearing in mind the huge increase in debt servicing and operating costs being imposed on the ratepayers?

Calvin Oaten,
Pine Hill