An Invercargill city councillor is worried only Invercargill ratepayers will be paying for an $11 million regional storage facility.
Cr Ian Pottinger raised his concerns as parts of a discussion about the council’s long-term plan at a council meeting yesterday.
Last year, the council started the construction of a multimillion-dollar facility in Tisbury to accommodate about 4.5 million pieces of the Southland Museum and Art Gallery’s collection, the first step towards the construction of a new museum which was labelled "Project 1225".
The council owns the building but the collection is owned by the Southland Museum and Art Gallery Trust.
Cr Pottinger asked Mayor Nobby Clark yesterday if there was any lease amount estimated for the storage when the construction was completed.
"I can’t quite understand why we don’t have this established yet ... I don’t see why the ratepayers of Invercargill would be building a free storage facility."
For him it was unreasonable the council would not get any monetary return to store something that did not belong to the council.
Mr Clark said the council owned the current museum and would own the future museum when constructed so due to that it received funding from the regional heritage rate, which included the Southland and Gore District Councils.
Cr Pottinger then asked how much money the council got from those rates.
While chief executive Clare Hadley said she could not provide a figure, she understood Invercargill’s council was the beneficiary of more money than the taxpayer’s contribution.
"I think the last time I looked, Invercargill city contributed something like $9700 and gets back more than a million dollars."
Mr Clark said it was fair to say that part of those rates was for the operation of the museum, which included the storage solution.
He said not only the storage but the contribution of the other councils into Invercargill’s facilities was part of a wider discussion.
In Auckland for example, people who lived in Auckland had free entrance to its museum but people from outside the city needed to pay the ticket price, he said.
"You don’t build an $11 million facility with no financial plan ahead to fund at least its operation," Cr Pottinger replied.
Deputy mayor Tom Campbell agreed with Cr Pottinger and said it was a fair question.
Project 1225 lead Nigel Skelt said the council was starting to source funding for the museum and the intention was not to have Invercargill as its sole funder.
"It will be much wider spread across a whole round of community funders and national funders — for sure."
