On Wednesday, council community services group manager Dr Thunes Cloete announced the council’s cultural facility development committee had been surprised to receive $1,064,500 from the lottery significant project fund earlier in the week, bringing total funding for the project to $3,075,000.
But he reminded councillors it was a "stop-go day".
Councillors were about "to make a call about ‘are we going to go ahead or are we stopping?"
"You do have that decision to make today," he said.
On Monday, the Otago Daily Times reported the project had failed to secure an additional $3million in this year’s funding rounds. Dr Cloete said the funding bodies required detailed plans and a final costing for the planned amalgamation of the Forrester Gallery, North Otago Museum and Waitaki District Archive on the Forrester Gallery’s 1882 Heritage New Zealand category 1 registered site.
Dr Cloete said the vote on Wednesday to allow the committee to use another $330,000 from the council-approved $1.9million in funding for the project would pay for the work needed to get the project to the stage the funding bodies expected.
To vote against the increase would make it impossible for the project to attract the funding it had missed out on this year.Only Cr Guy Percival voted against going ahead. He said only a quarter of the expected external funding had been approved by the July 1 deadline for the project and he was having doubts.
The $1million awarded this week from the Lottery Significant Projects Fund was "big bikkies" but it came after the funding body reviewed the same information as those that had denied the funding.
"I haven’t got the same optimism [about future funding rounds] as everyone else does," Cr Percival said.
"I’m gutted like everyone else, but I’m a realist."
He said the project suffered from a lack of public awareness and there were other options for the museum and archive. He said 90% of people "wouldn’t have a clue" about the cultural facility development committee’s plans.
"I don’t understand why the RSA [the vacant former North Otago Returned and Services Association building] cannot be used as the museum.
"I know you’ll boo-hoo that — it’ll be all wrong, I’m sure.
"Why on earth should we spend $6million to build something when we’ve got buildings here?"
Council chief executive Michael Ross told councillors to "back yourselves" and compare the project to the redevelopment of the Oamaru Opera House over a decade ago.
"We went out on a wing and a prayer," Mr Ross said.
The council had not funds before it decided to back the opera house but it then raised $7million for the project.
Cr Melanie Tavendale told councillors "to remember this [funding] discussion started four years ago" and a vote against Wednesday’s recommendation to grant the project committee $330,000 would "put this project back four years".
In that time "a whole new raft" of possibilities could come up, similar to moving the museum from its current Thames St building to the former RSA building in Itchen St.
"We can keep doing that for the next 20 years and we will achieve nothing," she said.
"We can throw as many hand grenades as we want.
"It’s going to take a little bit of bravery."
Before the vote, project committee chairman Cr Hugh Perkins announced he would be stepping down from the role.
He said he wanted to make it clear that while he had been recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s, which would affect his motor skills in future, his medical condition had nothing to do with his decision.
Rather, the lack of support for the project from councillors had delayed the project, caused extra work for staff and wasted ratepayers’ money.
