The Waitaki District Council's headquarters have been given a healthy rating as a low earthquake risk, a relief for staff who work there and ratepayers who might have had to pay to strengthen it.
Opened in 1884, with its clock tower added in 1903, the building was Oamaru's chief post office until the Waitaki District Council bought it, strengthened it and converted it as its headquarters in 1994.
A preliminary assessment of the building identified it as earthquake-prone, at 26% of the national building code. That required a full assessment and the council commissioned consultants Hadley and Robinson to do that.
Results of the full assessment were given to the council's assets committee on Tuesday as urgent general business, partly to assure staff and the public the building was not earthquake-prone.
It found the building met 100% of the new building standard for its use as a public building for more than 300 people.
However, if the council wanted to use it as an emergency operations centre for civil defence, then it was 70% of standard for sensitive disaster buildings such as hospitals, fire stations and other emergency services buildings.
A further study would have to be done to find out what was required to bring it up to that standard.
Waitaki Mayor Gary Kircher welcomed the high rating and said the council could have been ''looking down the barrel'' of very expensive work.
''It saves the ratepayer a lot of money.''
However, Cr Peter Garvan was critical of the large discrepancy between the two reports, which was ''well beyond the margin of error''.
''It's so at variance, it raises some serious issues,'' he said.
Customer services group manager Richard Mabon said the first assessment was ''very conservative and somewhat cautious'' and ''a more rigorous'' assessment was needed.
The latest assessment would also need to be considered under requirements of new legislation, yet to come from the Government, following investigations into the Christchurch earthquakes.
However, he was quite confident the rating would stand up.
