Centre management roasted
Christchurch mayor Phil Mauger has come out swinging at the Arts Centre management, criticising its decisions and suggesting that new trustees be appointed “who can do the job”.
His comments come as analysis by consultant Deloitte shows that the centre’s need for operational support from the council “is real”.
However, Christchurch City Council, which commissioned the Deloitte report, has refused to release the report publicly, despite it being discussed at length at an open briefing yesterday.
The Arts Centre Trust is calling on the council to give it between $1.83 million and $2.5m annually, otherwise, it says, the trust will fold and the council will be forced to take the centre on.
For the past three years, the council has given the Arts Centre $1.83m through a oneoff $5.5m heritage restoration grant. The only future council funding earmarked for the centre is a three-year $110,000 annual grant, which runs out in 2025-26.
At yesterday’s briefing, council head of community support and partnerships John Filsell said the council believed the Arts Centre could improve its financial viability by doing three key things.
He said it could stop funding depreciation, saving $900,000 annually. It could review its creative programme, which cost $800,000 a year; and it could review its staff costs.
The centre had 25.5 fulltime equivalent staff, costing $2.27m, an increase of two staff and $367,000 on the previous year, Filsell said.
Councillors previously asked council staff what a short-term Band-Aid solution would look like, and Filsell said the council could provide a $500,000 grant in 2024-25 and 2025-26 with no rates impact.
The money could come as a grant from its Capital Endowment Fund and by providing rates relief, Filsell said.
However, councillor Sam MacDonald said he wanted a long-term solution so another campaign for funding did not have to be launched by the centre in years to come.
Deloitte corporate finance partner Scott McClay, who joined the meeting via Zoom, said he believed the Arts Centre’s need for operational support was real. He said the centre did not have sufficient scope to get itself back into a cash-neutral position without affecting its objectives.
The Arts Centre is bound by an Act of Parliament, which puts controls on how it can operate, preventing it from being completely commercially tenanted. However, the council said its cost-saving ideas could be done within the bounds of the act.
Mauger said the Arts Centre had consistently taken the “narrowest view possible” of its legislative responsibility.
He said threats by the Arts Centre to seek High Court intervention to force the council to take over the centre had been made before.
“If the court intervenes, wouldn’t it be simpler for the court to find new trustees to implement a fuller understanding of the Act? Or if the council assumed ownership, wouldn’t one possible action similarly be to just appoint new trustees who can do the job?”
Mauger also noted that Arts Centre director Philip Aldridge wrote in an email to the council that “the public mostly seems to think the Arts Centre is owned by the council anyway, so perhaps it’s a better model”.
Mauger criticised the Arts Centre for not prioritising the rebuild of the Dux de Lux. Mauger promised during the 2022 election to get the earthquake-damaged building restored and bring the Dux back.
He asked McClay if he could estimate the difference in the centre’s financial position had it given the Dux site the priority that “most Christchurch people believed it deserved”.
McClay said he had been in the job far too long to hazard a guess at answering that question during an open forum.
Aldridge was at the briefing as a spectator, but was not able to take part, although he did call out “Not true” to one statement made by a council staff member.
After the briefing, Aldridge seemed buoyed by the findings of the Deloitte report, which the trust had seen. “There is a lot of hope there.”
He said it was “delightful” that the Deloitte report acknowledged the Arts Centre was facing an existential crisis.
Asked if the trust could make additional savings, Aldridge said there were very limited opportunities to save any more money, but the trust was always willing to sit around the table and have these discussions.
Aldridge will present the centre’s case to the council tomorrow as part of public hearings for the draft 10-year budget, the long-term plan.
Before the earthquakes, the council provided the Arts Centre with $400,000 for conservation and maintenance support, which was doubled to $800,000 for seismic upgrade works.