Crunch time looms for town hall
The wrecking balls could soon be unleashed on Masterton’s earthquake-prone town hall but not without opposition from a group of councillors determined to save its historic look.
Masterton District Council have an extraordinary meeting tomorrow to decide whether to fund demolition of the old buildings and construction of a new civic centre and library complex.
Councillors were starting to pin their colours to the mast yesterday as to which option they would support and the deputy mayor was all for starting afresh.
Graham McClymont thought the $20 million demolish-andrebuild-on-the-most-appropriatesite option would ‘‘sail through’’.
‘‘Rolling it all into the library project is so logical. Now is the time to look at doing a civic centre and a library all as one.’’
A third option allows for alternative
plans to be devised, which may or may not include retention of the facade of the municipal buildings as part of a new project.
Recent surveys showed there was some support within the community (37 per cent) to keep the ornate facade of the current buildings and one councillor, Gary Caffell, was leading the charge for this option.
‘‘It’s crunch time for councillors because they have to come out and say what they think.’’
He reckoned the council would be ‘‘putting the cart before the horse’’ if it made a decision to demolish before knowing what the plans were.
Councillor Bex Johnson expected tomorrow’s debate to be ‘‘quite intense’’ but she was comfortable with her view not to demolish the frontage of the building if possible. ‘‘Why would you do that if you don’t know what you are going to replace it with?’’
Councillor Tina Nixon wanted to build a new civic centre but also wanted to wait until more options had been considered.
‘‘We have to come up with something that the community can bear the cost of in the future.’’
Mayor Lyn Patterson said she would not be sharing her position until tomorrow’s meeting.
Councillors David Holmes and Chris Peterson were undecided and Tim Nelson, Sandy Ryan, Fraser Mailman and Brent Gare did not respond to requests to speak to Stuff.
The total budget for the new project is $20.5m which includes $15.5m set aside in the long-term plan and another $5m set aside for district library developments.
‘‘It’s crunch time for councillors because they have to come out and say what they think.’’
Gary Caffell
Masterton District councillor