Sharing the risk

I am sure the DCC will be able to 'ignore such a churlish act against its citizens'; it has perpetrated all of the churlish acts so far! This injunction illustrates just how concerned and desperate many citizens of Dunedin are to be heard by their councils! If the mantle of poor democracy needs to be cast, let it fall directly upon Chin, Cairns and their supporters! The stadium support of many on the election ballot was firmly withheld and with the appalling ward system of voting, is it any wonder we ended up with many of the worst of a poor bunch sitting on the council? Multipurpose, cost effective, and innovative are some of the adjectives repeatedly bleated by the pro-stadium lot; I think 'delusional' is all-encompassing!

I see lots of critics here who haven't been won over, I saw the town hall full to overflowing with them the other week - I think you're wrong when you say otherwise.
"Undemocratic" is not holding a binding referendum when there's reasonable evidence that 80% of the city don't want to pay for the stadium.

Perhaps what the editor meant to say was that it is unarguable that there is a case for such a stadium - not that the case for such a stadium is unarguable.
A correction is called for so that people do not get the wrong idea - thank you.

The case for such a stadium is absolutely arguable and you are doing Dunedin ratepayers a gross disservice by printing this.

Complacency is not the crime, lack of money is the problem. Why should 53,000 ratepayers be responsible for an entertainment structure when the main users - rugby clubs and university clubs - are not paying their fair share of the expense. We would love a stadium, we just dont want to pay for it - we are in the middle of a recession - do the numbers - how can we afford to run the city and pay for a 30,000 seat stadium - the onus all on 53,000 people - be reasonable - count how many people have
lost their jobs in Dunedin over the last 6 months.
investment of our future yes but not at this time - it does not make good business sense. This is a risk we cannot afford to take.

The court injunction against the DCC has to be the most undemocratic act to have befallen this City. It flies in the face of more than two years of extensive consultation, including a local body election, whereby the arguments and justification for a new roofed multipurpose stadium has won over the critics. I surely hope the DCC is able to ignore such a churlish act against its citizens.

You say "To deny that its existence will not enhance the city and benefit the region is simply absurd" but when you try to identify those enhancements and benefits you are at a loss...
You point out it's not necessary for the rugby cup; the private sector has shown itself "chary of the project"; as is rugby; indeed, only the university & its students will benefit, but, as you say, the university is not paying anything towards the actual stadium; in fact it has entered into no contracts to use the stadium for anything at all. As you point out no other users endorse it without qualification: I am therefore at a loss to understand why you think that denying its existence will benefit the region is absurd.

The depth of this recession is well known and understood - by those of us who study reality. It will be somewhat like a descending roller-coaster, ups and downs but generally down. Can't be anything else - you can only drive when there is gas in the tank. There is only one light in which to examine projects from here on in - sustainability. The stadium fails that, end of story.

"To deny that its existence will not enhance the city and benefit the region is simply absurd."
How can anyone say this? Stadia never make money. The nation's big event organisers have already said they will not bring acts down here. We struggle to fill the town hall, and indeed The Regent when Hot Chocolate came.
These are the facts.
The Edgar Centre serves all other sports purposes.
When you have a small city with a wordlwide renown for being a large collection of heritage buildings, and wildlife, what would be the best use of $200 million? it's not hard to imagine something less costly, or effective outside the stadium square.
It thus comes down to the obsessivness with rugby.
When I consider engineering feats like the Taieri Gorge, made in the 1880s, with pick, shovel, horse and dray, erecting giant iron viaducts in the wilderness, I then shake my head, for here we are in an age of modern machinery/technology, and they saw we can't put a roof (as if it's needed anyway) on Carisbrook. Again, it's clear the stadium lies down to being a self appointed memorial. Lets therefore drop it, and put the eggs into many baskets, so they won't all risk being broken, and will hatch into productive hens.

Ah! The long-awaited appearance of the 'chief dinosaur' complete with another helping of the old 'Aramoana' rhetoric, warmed-up a bit for present-day consumption.
Of course, it's hard to argue with Sir Cliff's wishes for the on-going welfare of Dunedin, even if, in the view of many, this would be entirely the way to assure that it could never be delivered. The 'devil-is-in-the-detail' on this one, and another 'serving' of the vague endlessly-parroted stuff which is the C.S.T's stock-in-trade will do little to allay the fears of anyone but the terminally gullible, in this instance.
Those whose view of the future is not restricted by the blinkers of-the-past, such as Southland Regional Council C.E.O. Ciaran Keogh, have looked intelligently at the future, which should, in my view, increasingly focus on a time when the passage of 'peak-oil' has made it uneconomic to transport primary produce beyond the farm-gate, much less to the far side of the globe. That time is not centuries away, we haven't got that luxury; in a decade or two, and certainly within the lifetimes of most of us, this is going to rush towards us with an almost exponentially-escalating speed. The time to prepare ourselves for the fact that the only thing we will be able to export to our advantage, must likely travel by optic-fibre or satellite, in short 'intellectual property' in the guise of knowledge, expertise and the fruits of research, is now; not once it is too late to sieze the intitiative. The cost of fuel, the 'carbon-footprint' issue, and tariff protection of producers in our traditional markets for primary-produce, will have seen to that.
I find it inconceivable, then, that the city is prepared to gamble two decades of its future well-being and viability on a cosmetic gesture to the future, such as a Stadium, while dragging its feet in getting-behind a mere $12.5m, to assure a School of Design for Otago University.
If we fail to respond to the challenges of the near-future, we stand to swallowed up and spat-out again, while those centres with far-sightedness and clear, well considered objectives are going to eclipse us on every level. More enlightened thinking could make Dunedin a sought-after destination for the brightest-and-best, thus providing the opportunities to retain such people in our city while the pro-Stadium element will no-doubt still be persisting with woolly-minded euphemisms and 'feel-good' rhetoric to support their dead-duck; because, when you get down to it, that is all the pro-stadium lobby and City fathers have ever had to offer.

you say the city must defer other projects to build the stadium - what would you give up? deferring the South Dunedin library? the next stage in fixing the the sewage treatment problem? the purchase of Carisbrook? meeting our obligations to make the town hall able to be accessed by the disabled? broadband fibre? probably the sewage plant is the only thing that comes close. Personally I think the stadium is a luxury that will bring no net wealth to the city, and in fact will result in a net transfer of wealth from the city over its lifetime, even if it makes an operational profit, I've yet to see any reviewable study that shows otherwise.