Chin 'chuffed' at $15m for stadium

Well technically anything the city could do with the money its going to waste on the stadium is a potential opportunity cost of building it.
Laying competing fibre with Telecom (as happened in the Wellington CBD) should have been done years ago, if only to provide some competition for Telecom to push their prices down - monopolies are never a good thing.
As I said before we want to bring tech people back with their jobs or lure to lure new ones here - fast cheap communication is required if you're going to live here and work somewhere else - VOIP that craps out during the day when things gets busy doesn't hack it. FTTH is a must for these sorts of home businesses
I think the council has been distracted by the stadium - both the capital that should have been used for economic development and their attention to the much more important issues of the local economy. The stadium itself has become this giant boondoggle that no one wants to stop - Nero had a fiddle, they have the stadium.

Paul,
You take Telecom at face value. You really should engage your critical faculties and do some research behind the announcements.
Dunedin will get VDSL in some exchanges, scheduled for Q3 2009. But you need to live within 100m of the exchange or cabinet to see the maximum theoretical speeds. If you are any further away,you won't see any better than ADSL2. Plus, since Telecom's backhaul hasn't been upgraded to suit, you won't see anywhere near those speeds.
Faster broadband for Dunedin would be better served by an independent consortium funding around $5m to $8m to build a fibre link to Christchurch. That would give you gigabits.
You miss the point of the earlier posting - our IT industries, web developers, software programmers etc are directly competing with those in other countries who do have access to faster, cheaper broadband. I remember about 10 years ago when Dunedin was being touted (by the early incarnation of the EDU) as the perfect place for call centres - great location, good lifestyle, highly-trained and educated staff. There was only one crucial thing missing - cheap telecommunications. That's why the major bulk of that work went to India and the Phillipines.
Look around and see what opportunities are really being missed because the old boys don't understand IT.

But once again you can not make such comparison with any meaning, because if you were to assume like Bev Butler has stated that business in Dunedin is suffering because of poor broadband is simply incorrect.
There are any number of reasons people choose to live in other parts of the city, lifestyle, climate and work among them. The issues around immigration priority are something that possibly need to be addressed, but the Stadium is not an opportunity cost to business development in Dunedin as a result of poor broadband connection.
Further this discussion re broadband is more or less redundant as Telecom has a stated road map for the rolling out of the much faster VDSL2 network over the year, in which Dunedin will be even better served. This network will produce download speed of up to 50Mbs and upload speeds of 20Mbs, that is fast by anyone's standards. Simply if you are with a slow provider now, switch, this is the beauty of competing (finally) providers in this country.
If you have issues with other employment conditions within Dunedin, then the Chamber of Commerce and the DCC are two avenues to approach to address these.
Yes Dunedin does need to create more wealth, which town or city operating within the western economic model doesn't. However pinning the so called failures on Dunedin not to attract or address these industries is not the fault of the stadium.
The argument has been made time and time again that you can get better wages elsewhere, there are more opportunities elsewhere, conditions are better elsewhere have been aired ad nausea. There are opportunity costs associated with living in other regions. Auckland has $1B annual loss in productivity due to traffic congestion, and I could suggest Chch and Wgtn are not too far behind in that area - my rush hour last night in Dunedin was all of 10mins long. If one wishes to leave Auckland for a long weekend one needs to contend with the rest of the city emptying out too. In Dunedin I have never noticed a slowing of my trips to Chch or Central as a result of holiday crowds. If you want to make comparisons with western nations, then good luck finding a tech job in London or NY at the moment (you and the millions of others), good luck finding accommodation that doesn't cost 4, 5, 6x what you pay in NZ, good luck with the private health care, the cost of living etc etc.
Yes business conditions in Dunedin need to evolve, but no poor broadband is not an opportunity cost of the Stadium Development.

I was originally talking about this in the context of luring those tech people who can work anywhere but might choose Dunedin for lifestyle reasons - so I think comparisons with Singapore and South Korea are valid - though maybe with other English speaking countries are probably more appropriate. We export a lot of smart people, bringing them back to Dunedin (rather than say Auckland, or Christchurch) gives us contacts around the world that can be leveraged.
My original point was that we need to be focusing on creating more local businesses - ones that create new wealth, or bring it in from outside the region - this is something that Chch does so much better than Dunedin (for example if you go to work for a tech company in Chch you can get priority in immigration, not so Dunedin).

Tourism doesn't create wealth - it's a service industry. It transfers it from one place to another (but that's equally good for the local economy - if the money is coming from elsewhere). If your friends are creating new scenery, and shipping a little bit of it home with each customer I might agree with you.
I'll disagree with you on broadband too - I know people who lose most of a day when they upload their work product when they're done (artists who make clip art), others who still buy airline tickets to ship data, international VOIP just doesn't work at certain hours of the day, latency generally sucks, there's little local peering - the universities are on the right track with karen - we need something like that everywhere, and real fibre (not just cabinets).

With all due respect (because there is obviously none shown from you to me), I don't question your professional abilities.
The question is not do we have fantastic broadband relative to Singapore, Japan or South Korea, the question is do we have good broadband in relation to the rest of the country, in which the simple answer is yes we do. Otherwise I might bemoan the cheap petrol in the US, or the cheap Croissant in France, little relation to business in Dunedin, but they seem to have a bearing on this discussion.
In Vancouver where I worked as a web/new media developer ( I so have no idea eh) the broadband was about 1/3 faster than my speeds here in Dunedin, but I was paying more than twice the comparable price.
For a guy who has no idea, I have a pretty great plan both home and work, and my iPhone 3G is possibly 3-4times more reliable here in Dunedin (with the hills) than in CHCH.
Please don't end posts with the arrogance of "You have no Idea". I don't make or presume to make assumptions about your occupation and or web connection.

Paul, three questions:
1) What's your upload speed?
2) What's your guaranteed download speed? 3) What's your data charge per Megabyte?
If the answer to 1 is "less than my download speed" and the answer to 2 is < 10Mbps and the answer to 3 is >$0, then you don't have fantastic broadband.
Fantastic broadband is $50 per month for a Gigabit, no data charges. That's where Singapore and Japan and South Korea are. You have no idea.

There are of course counter arguments to all of what you say, but the sun is shining.
You can not say Tourism does not create wealth but brings it in, that's simply wrong. I'm sitting next to a tourism start up and they are about to create wealth.
Dunedin has fantastic broadband. It also is better served by 3G than Chcc. I am one of those web/designer developers you talk about and have no problem with broadband at all.

Our real problem is not so much that service businesses are closing - that's just a symptom of a wider issue:
One way of looking at how money works is that wealth gets created when you make things that are worth more than their components (labour, materials, etc) - it moves around in the economy in the form of money and loses a little bit of value at each step - you can sort of think of it as friction. Just passing wealth around in the service economy without creating new wealth is not sustainable.
Of particular interest is where is wealth flowing in the Otago economy - is it coming in or being created faster than it's leaving us (in which case we'll be losing those stores that depend on taking a chunk of it as it moves around).
Stores that sell you stuff effectively take wealth out of the local economy - since some of the money you spend there goes to pay for the things you buy (while some stays in the form of labour, rents, etc).
Building the stadium will be a net drain of wealth from our economy - money will flow out for materials, some will stay in the economy in the form of labour, a little (< 10%) may come in the form of the govt grant. Overall it's going to be a net loss though.
Running the stadium will bring in a little wealth from the few out-of-town visitors we have (we don't have the airport/plane capacity for big crowds to just appear for a game) but will probably drain more because of payments for appearances. For example if you bring in a big name act and pay them $X to appear, but don't bring in at least $X from outside the region it's a drain on our wealth - and we'll be worse off.
A stadium is entertainment, it's part of the service economy, it doesn't create wealth.
So how do we create the wealth we need to prosper? farming is a great way - so is manufacturing - tourism doesn't create wealth but it does bring it in from elsewhere, so does the University.
These are the things the council should be spending money and effort on since they will create new local wealth and improve the local economy - spending money on service sector jobs (be it the stadium or the new mall) in a time when the economy is in panic and decline is IMHO a mistake - those are what you do when you have wealth to spare.
For example there are people working here on the internet - in ones and twos and largely earning US$ and Euros, they are doing really well at the moment - there are a bunch around town, more than you'd think, they work odd hours, they often work at home, they don't show up on anyone's economic radar, but they are bringing millions into the local economy - they are why we need better broadband. Dunedin's a great place to live - luring more people who do this would be one way to start
.
We need to be continually creating new primary sector businesses - they don't last forever, they fail, they move away (like F&P). If we don't encourage renewal we will shrivel up and die - I think someone needs to go down to the council and teach them some economics.

You are quite right. A guaranteed maximum price contract will be exclusive of any cost fluctuations. That is, the increase in the price of items between the time of submitting a tender, and the time of purchasing. Particularly in the case of this contract where there are a significant number of imported items ( eg. steel ) and a relatively long contract period where currency fluctuations will have a bearing. The purchase price will also fluctuate depending on supply. Again this will be an issue for this contract where other stadia are undergoing significant works at the same time. And that's ignoring any other contstruction works from outside of New Zealand with higher paying clients. Hawkins Construction are no fools, they will be well covered in their tender tags.

Walking down town in my lunch hour, it's quite unnerving to see so many shops closing, and it's happening so fast. More empty shops every day. It will be very interesting to see how the new shopping mall goes in this climate! What is wrong with these councillors who have voted for this stadium project to continue? Are they blind or do they really not care? They must be so well-heeled they're not feeling the pinch as the rest of us are. A very sad day for Dunedin. Last one out, turn out the lights...

Well said, brilliant, I completely agree.

Well - 'Acting World Cup Minister' Gerry Brownlee obviously has a bizarre sense of humour. With one stroke he has insulted and alienated 80% of Dunedin ratepayers, while simultaneously perpetuating the Stadium circus that is making Dunedin 'the laughing stock' as so accurately pointed out by Graham Bishop. After all - you don't see an entire city's ratepayers being 'railroaded' into financially supporting a professional sport on a massive scale every day!Once, the name 'Dunedin' would have been synonymous with good old-fashioned rectitude. Now we can only offer lessons on dispensing snake-oil. A possible course for the Uni? Invaluable for aspiring politicians. Common-sense not required.

I entirely agree. It's the greatest mistake ever made in Dunedin, and the magnitude of the stupidity displayed by the DCC, ORC and the present Government is truly awesome.

You are raising some very good questions here and I do hope that they will be answered by Mayor Chin. If there are $15m dollars coming from the Government they should go to ease the future rates burden for everybody and NOT to make up for the private sector funding shortfall, especially since the rest of us will also shoulder the burden of any future cost blow-outs of this hopeless project.

...since the stadium was originally priced in 2007.
You do remember 2007, right? That was when the NZ dollar was worth about US 0.80. Now the kiwi is worth less than fifty US cents.
If you think that the stadium price will only be $198m, then you are foolish. Unfortunately, this foolishness is going to take money out of my pocket and hobble DCC capital spending for decades to come.
Maybe you like to have your beaches closed because of sewage. Maybe you enjoy tap water that tastes awful. Maybe you think that the stadium will make up for the Third-World grade public utilities that you and your cohorts will be inflicting on Dunedin for generations to come.
Well, if you believe that the stadium budget won't be a colossal blowout, then you may believe that a stadium is preferable to clean beaches and clean drinking water.

A successful business is one that is prepared to adapt to the times and make changes. We are in a recession. This is not the time for lavish expenditure, and living beyond our means. What sort of nonsense is it to build this white elephant when every day people are losing their jobs, and business' are closing? I hope the people of Dunedin remember who made this decision when it comes to election time.

This is the greatest thing that has ever happened in Dunedin, Its awesome!!!

So $15m of public money is to swell the shortfall in private funding of between 0 & $15m. How and who is to supply the $20m that the City is pledged to find from sources other than ratepayer-owned resources? And who or what is to provide the real shortfall in the private funding? As Cr Bryan Scott revealed at last month's ORC meeting, the CST has only so far raised about $16m in funds that will be available for construction. This leaves a shortfall of $29 - $39m (depending on whether you include in the sum the cost of borrowing the shortfall) in their contribution.

Or should that be Stuffed?
Earlier it was reported that the Government underwrite was for the $20m that the DCC had resolved had to come from sources other than rates. Now it is being reported that the $15m is covering the failure of the private sector to come up with their contribution. So what is it? If it is indeed the latter, then how is the DCC going to find the missing $20m? Why is the Government underwriting the private sector on this rugby stadium?
Mayor Chin should pay attention to the call in this morning's ODT letters column to have the courage of his convictions and go to the ratepayers for a new mandate to have the right to govern this City. All he has done so far is to successfully divide the City, fail to provide any form of strategic future for the City, and ensure that the business of the Council is really conducted behind closed doors.
Take up the challenge Mayor Chin.

is that the city company set up to run the stadium will be slightly more profitable - that $15M shortfall in 'private' funding was simply advance seat sales that were not made - in essence the National government is covering the money that local people were not willing to pay to buy those seats - not enough people were convinced enough that the stadium was a good idea to actually front their own money. The CST really failed here - at the main piece of fundraising that they were responsible for.
It's certainly better than us having to pay for it and mean that the city company that will run the stadium's future profits that were being siphoned off as 'private fundraising' will now be available to it to hopefully make the thing pay for itself.

If you really think that the $15 million from the government is somehow only funded by Dunedin tax payers then maybe you need to go back to school (or University, there is there is a fantastic one right in Dunedin).
If you average the tax collected in New Zealand per person then Dunedin counts for less than 3% of the population. This funding is being subsidised by all of New Zealand. If you then take into account the higher salaries earned in the one city, Auckland, that accounts for nearly half on the New Zealand population this 3% becomes something even smaller.
Personally I can't wait to see the new stadium and am happy to pay my share.

Must be wonderful to be able to pull figures out of the air like that.
So far this stadium has cost anything from $198 through to $500m.
It astounds me how people who have little or no access to all of the balance sheets have such definitive understanding of the cost of the stadium. These are very cleaver people, who possibly should have been on Wall St last year advising of impending doom - or not.

This $15 million from the Government, to allow the stadium to go ahead, means that ratepayers will be committed to paying $250 million.