Chinese garden work to stop after budget blowout

THE Invercargill City Council has voted to stop work on a planned Chinese friendship garden as another budget blowout was revealed at yesterday’s council meeting.

Cr Lindsay Thomas successfully moved to include the budget blowout in the public section of the meeting, which revealed the garden in Queens Park was set to cost an extra $280,000 to complete.

The council had originally budgeted $600,000 for the pro ject and the revised estimate of completion now being $882,700.

It is the second budget blowout revealed this week by the council, after the news on Monday the council’s Don St development had gone $4.5 million over budget.

During discussion on the newly added motion, Cr Thomas moved for the immediate halt of work on the garden.

He said the work completed so far resulted to nothing more than ‘‘half a duck pond and a footpath around it.’’

‘‘With the Don St building, we have no chance at all to actually stop that. With this, we have got a chance . . . I’ve got the oppor tunity to say yes or no and on this I’m saying no.’’

Cr Lesley Soper opposed the motion to stop work on the garden, saying it would have a negative impact on the council’s friendship city relationship with Suqian in China.

After a strong debate, the motion was carried to stop work on the garden seven votes to five.

Earlier, councillors expressed their disappointment over the handling of the budget blowout on the Don St development, calling for frameworks to be put in place to ensure future developments did not follow the same path.

Cr Ian Pottinger said he wanted to rely on ‘‘good project management framework the council could adhere to’’, saying the council was currently ‘‘living on a wing and a prayer’’.

Cr Thomas agreed, saying the situation had made the council ‘‘seen to be incapable.’’

Cr Lloyd Esler said although the debate had been around the negatives, there were positives to come from it.

‘‘We have got a large, modern building to replace a pretty ramshackle one . . . I’m sure if we had been presented with the total cost that it now looks like, we probably would have said yes anyway.’’

Councillors voted to accept a report from the finance and policy committee recommending approval for the extra funding, as well as for an external review of the project to be carried out.