Suzanna Martin told Allied Media in December it was an ‘‘absolute joke’’ the council was planning to use all the proceeds from the sale of a Merioneth St property to pay down debt, arguing the money should instead go towards heritage restoration projects in the town.
Her stand won strong support from Arrowtown community leaders, and prompted Arrowtown-Kawarau ward councillors Melissa White and Heath Copland to push for a council rethink of the issue.
Three months later, it led to the council’s smart finance committee deciding this week to recommend a $600,000 portion of the sale proceeds go into an Arrowtown reserve fund. The recommendation was approved by the full council at its meeting on Thursday.
Mrs Martin said that she would have liked more - to account for nearly two decades’ capital gain under the council’s ownership - but was feeling ‘‘gratitude’’ nonetheless.
‘‘The council’s conceded and reallocated funds back, so you can’t ask for a lot more than that.’’
In 2007, her late husband, property developer John Martin, saved three historic miners’ cottages in Arrowtown’s Buckingham St from demolition by buying them - along with the neighbouring Merioneth St property - for $1.9 million from developer Eamon Cleary.
He then on-sold the parcel for the same price to the council, which mostly paid for the properties from Arrowtown reserve funds and the sale of Arrowtown leasehold sections.
However, the previous council decided 12 months ago to use the entire proceeds of the sale of the Merioneth St property for reducing debt.
The property went on to sell in October for $2.76m, and without Mrs Martin’s intervention, none of the $2,054,008 in net sale proceeds would have gone back to the township.
Mrs Martin said she could not say enough about the support she had received from community leaders including Nicolet Spice and David Clarke.
‘‘They were the driving force - I was just the noisy one.
‘‘I’m just so bloody relieved we didn’t have to keep fighting, and I think $600,000 will make a big difference to Arrowtown.’’
If the decision had gone the other way, she would have ‘‘pushed even harder’’, she said.
‘‘I hope they’ve learned from this, because if they do it again without due diligence, we’ll have to take a legal stance because it’s illegal.’’
She also pointed out the Arrowtown community did a lot of fundraising for restoring the miners’ cottages.
Cr Copland, the chairman of the smart finance committee, said it recommended the council pay $600,797 to the Arrowtown Endowment Land Reserve, with the balance of $1.45m to be used to repay council debt.
The allocation was based on the property’s government valuation in 2007 being 29% of the total cost of buying the four properties.
