Council got centre issue ‘badly wrong’

Former city councillor Kerry Neal responds to last week’s Ask the Mayor column on progress on reopening the Trafalgar Centre.

Councillors should take a hard look at the words of their meeting opening prayer, particularly with reference to openness and honesty, before any more unfortunate statements are made on this issue.

The fate of the Trafalgar Centre has come from a threat of demolition or a $27 million expenditure, to grudging acceptance that councillors were badly advised to a point where now little more than normal upgrading is required. Let’s look at the facts: 1) Council did not recognise that the decision to close the Trafalgar Centre was based on draft interim discussion documents.

2) The legal adviser and senior staff clearly did not recognise the above point.

3) All the reports were based on assumptions, not facts.

4) The authors of the reports submitted to the council stated frequently that they could not find critical items on the plans. Had they looked in the specifications they would have found all they needed.

5) The attempt to denigrate the foundations by claiming they were only 3m deep and that they would have suffered damage by erosion have in both cases been proved to be false. The foundation piles are nominally 11m deep and the condition of them is pristine.

6) The attempt to malign the centre by claiming that people would not be able to exit in the event of the main entrance being blocked is irresponsible. There are at least 10 other major points of exit, all strategically positioned.

Now let’s look at some of the other important points: $600,000 was purloined from the Trafalgar Centre Capital Expenditure Account to enable Saxton Stadium to operate; There will be a minimum of $400,000 loss of revenue by the time the centre is reopened; The enormous cost of the flawed reports and now the resolution to spend $450,000 to employ another tier of management.

The total of the above items alone will arguably amount to more than $2m with nothing more to show for it than a lot of unnecessary friction between the parties involved.

Now we find that a meeting was held on May 7, at a cost of $45,000, which allowed the authors of the original reports to re-assess their position. Their findings? – That work below the main stadium is not now likely yet the Mayor has the audacity to claim that nothing has changed.

To also continue to state that the building could fail catastrophically is extremely unwarranted and irresponsible and for reasons outlined in this letter, must cease.

However, catastrophic failure certainly applies to how this whole issue has been handled.

An apology is not needed, just an admission that her Council got it badly wrong will do.