Council Planning and Finance Committee

Kia ora koutou, ko Richard Benge taku ingoa, Kai Whakahare Matua, Arts Access Aotearoa. I'm the Executive Director of Arts Access Aotearoa based here in Wellington. Our submission which has been made covers many references and research for you to take into account. But today I want to address the impact of the proposed cuts to the Creative Capital budget, particularly wanting to look at the value of arts and culture as social investment for our city. But I'll begin with an introduction to myself. I'm a Wellingtonian, and I would like to just run over some points about my career and how my career has been a big part of the arts and culture in Wellington. I'm particularly grateful for all the people that have backed me and have supported me in that career over many years. In an international public diplomacy role, I helped to orchestrate the re-flying event by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2010 when she referred to Wellington as the coolest little capital. Remember that? It was my job in that event to contract the making of the most massive symbolic and creative wreath of flowers to Flowers Manuela so the Secretary could lay that at Pukeahu. In the early '90s, I was the director of many Wellington Christmas parades which were umbrellaed by the Wellington City Council and the Wellington Retailers Association. I've devised several major creative community arts advocacy events, one of which Mayor Frank Wilde carried a flaming torch from the Civic Square across the bridge behind me to the Lambton Harbour Lagoon in a multicultural event to promote human rights and healthcare during the devastating AIDS pandemic. In the early 2000s, I managed Old St Paul's, the cultural events and conservation efforts for Heritage New Zealand and our city. That iconic building would have been lost to the city and nation had it not been for the courage of Wellingtonians and others who had the vision to save it. And for the last 15 years, I've been the Director of Arts Access Aotearoa and I've advocated that accessibility to the arts is the right of all people in New Zealand. Our national organisation grew out of the vision and founders who were Wellingtonians. It's always had the backing of Wellington City Council, and for 20 years we've been housed in the Toi Pōneke Arts Centre, which is your engine our city's engine for collaboration and influence in the arts that drives events and careers. At Arts Access Aotearoa, we've helped the Council write your lead arts policy, Ahotini, and made sure that accessibility was throughout it so that for seniors, youth, deaf and disabled people, you would all be able— we would all be able to participate in and help drive the arts and cultural events in festivals, in street events, museums, galleries, venues, assisting the producers and the funders with the outcomes they want for the people, and to promote the value of community arts spaces, Vincent's and Pablo's, so the most marginalised citizens of our city could be involved in their arts and cultural. So that they would be truly accessible and equitable. Wellington City Council is known for its vision as the creative capital of New Zealand, and I personally love how the Mayor is consistently looking into the camera ahead of weekends to tell the people what's on, what to look out for, what to support, how to get out and participate in the city, and I know you as councillors do the same thing. Often it's into the arts events, the festivals, the gigs, and the concerts. These events happen because of the long lead-up over decades in professional development of the arts workers, the technicians, the performers, the managers. And there are other cities in New Zealand that would like to take the moniker of the arts capital from us if we give it to them. So, Councillors, my main purpose in front of you today is that I'm not asking you to prioritise the arts and culture over water pipes and the highly complex issues of water management and any of the other very important infrastructural and rates management tasks you have in front of you.

For any questions? Thank you. Any questions? No, I think you've been really clear. Thank you for coming in and making your submission. Thank you. We next have Felicity Wong. Welcome, Felicity. Yeah, you can sit at the table or podium, whatever you prefer. Hello everyone, kia ora koutou. 26% of Wellingtonians don't feel the city is lively and attractive, but 77% of residents support heritage, and History Places Wellington seeks a city history and tourism regeneration fund to support the maintenance of historic areas. Community-led tourism, and retention and development of trade skills. We ask for assistance to be given to building and property owners to encourage upgrades and maintenance to make the retrofitting of buildings with history more affordable than new builds. We support retrofit and conservation and advocate for repair and reuse over demolition and deterioration. HPW asks the council to prioritise the retrofit and reuse of old buildings to efficiently use expensive materials, support local employment, and reduce carbon emissions. Adaptive reuse should be our default preference over demolition and empty car parks. And it's such welcome news that the historic Dixon Street Flats are on track to open fully occupied, 120 homes modernised and refurbished by the end of the year. A sad contrast, however, is the carbon crime being committed by Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington's demolition of the 80-unit Gordon Wilson Flats by not simply removing the tatty, heavy façade and replacing it with a lightweight glass frontage. The remaining 80% of that building is not earthquake-prone, and the enormous amount of embodied carbon in its sturdy concrete skeleton is instead going to the landfill. We want a strengthening of local planning rules to prioritise adaptive reuse and protection of areas with history. We view those places as drivers of local economic regeneration, civic pride, and sustainable development, and we ask you to retain heritage funding in the budget, which is not a very big amount. We support right-sizing our city plans and budget, focus on renewals and maintenance, not upgrades, in the city's enormous transport budget. And January's transport report continued to use misleading data for population growth, referring to 25% population growth expected in Wellington City Actually, we're 2,000 fewer people than in 2018. So don't accept the continual flights of fantasy. A sensible approach is a maintenance mode of renewals, at least until we pay down some of the city's debt. Thank you. Thank you, Felicity. Is there any questions? Councillor Chung.

Yeah, I think that's a really good point. There's a number of things that building owners ask for. They ask for rates relief, they ask for expert advice, and they ask for a City Council that gets them to yes for investing in their buildings, including adding extra storeys on the top. And I'll give you an example. In the historic Dixon Street flats, the City Council asked the new building owner to make much wider elevators which would have been hugely costly. In actual fact, because of the existing use rights and the heritage nature of the building, they were able to say, no, those elevators have been working perfectly well for 80 years, do not put that additional cost on us. Thank you. We've got one more question from Councillor Rogers.

Yeah, I'm not so much asking for a subsidy as asking for an easy track so that retrofitting can be achieved more easily so that obstacles are not put in the place of building owners who want to adaptively reuse heritage. Heritage has to have a modern use, and it has to be modernised with a commercial return. So I very much would endorse the Council recognising the economic value of adaptive reuse. Thank you. We're out of time now, but thank you for coming in, Felicity. We next up have Steve Cosgrove. Welcome, Steve.

Kia ora everyone, and actually Paul, it's worth, very much agreed with some of the comments I just heard about the difficulty in the connections across the CBD. There's all these wonderful links now out to Petone and all around, and just thinking about some personal circumstances, that's something I've also struggled with. So it's great to hear some of the other presenters. So I'll touch a little bit about me and then a couple issues that I want to speak about in terms of spending and transport and climate and a couple of other matters. So I'm a Wellingtonian. By that I mean I was born here, I've lived here, I've studied here, I have my father here, I'm a business owner here, so through and through. And generally I've, my my business has all been in the Lambton Ward. I've also got Norwegian heritage, hence this shirt. This jersey is in relation to the fact that it was Independence, or rather Constitutional Day, in Norway, which is about 2 centuries old. Now, I love the Wellington compact nature. It's a walking city. We've got cafes, we've got arts, we've got gardens, we've got beautiful weather sometimes. And it's a lovely place, but clearly what we want is we want business to thrive, we want everyone to thrive, all the people thrive depending on their circumstances and ages and so forth. And I guess really what I was thinking on when I was looking through the plan for the year is, you know, obviously this whole financial tension which has been around for quite some time, and I think the sort of two words for me is really simple and soon, right? So, you know, when we're doing, you know, when ratepayers are contributing, you know, their money, We really want to see things delivered simply and we really want them soon. Now simply doesn't mean bad, like bad quality, just focus on getting them done and focus on getting them relatively quickly. Because as they grow in time or in budget, that's when they start getting, you know, kind of opposition and attack and so on. So, you know, and when I think about that, you know, we were just talking or hearing about cycleways, very clear there. You know, obviously we've got some of those key connections in and I use those, but would love I'd love to see those finished, you know, simply and soon. There's all these things around climate response, which is another area that potentially is getting a downgrade in funding. Again, we need to take some really key steps around that in terms of emission reduction, in terms of adaptation. We've obviously got Moa Point, all the sewerage systems, we've got all the drainage things to deal with when we've got heavy rain out in Berempura and so forth, and all the general projects. It's wonderful, for instance, to see this new building and to see the new library library, you know, so there's all these things, but I guess ultimately we really want to make sure that those projects get delivered efficiently and effectively. And again, we're not wanting things that are really devoid of character, you know, like you need to have sufficient quality and zest and interest to them. But if we can manage to get the velocity and efficiency through, then I think that will really help with social license to buy in, and then obviously we don't have to push the rates up quite so high. Obviously, we need to keep the rates affordable. I think generally Wellingtonians are happy spending money on rates if they see that the dollars are being very well spent. So that's what I've got to say.

Perfect, that's all good. Okay, mine will probably be quite brief because I've gone through all the key proposals and I have thoughts and opinions on all of them, but I won't go through each one here. It does speak to there being a general need for the council to be saving money or otherwise changing its income in some way, and I get that. With the cycleway changes, for example, I understand that it's going to be about $7.1 million saved, I believe it says here, over the course of what this leg of the project would have been. But sort of speaking to what has been mentioned previously, I do wonder if this is a little bit of a short-sighted move. There's definitely some massive benefits to implementing these sorts of projects across the city, beyond just the fiscal, I guess, the fiscal side of it. And at the same time, looking at some of the other items that are being cut or being reduced in funding, a lot of these seem to be quite low in the amount of money that's being saved from it. The $255,000 reduction in Heritage, Resilience and Regeneration funds, for example, which I would imagine that that will have a massive impact to this particular need, but in terms of the council's overall budget line, it's relatively small. So I think, not to again ramble on too long, I would be curious to see for future consultations, for no better choice of words, it would be good to understand how some of these decisions were made, what the sort of, I guess, the rationale behind why you've decided to go through— go to— what am I trying to say? Why you've decided to pull X number of funding. Like, what is the actual options that got presented to make these decisions, I suppose. As a whole, again, I completely understand the need to find revenue in these trying times, and even though I would love to see the cycleways go forward as they were presented, I can also understand the need to cycle them back, no pun intended. But that's essentially all I've got to say on this. Apologies if it's a little, again, a little rambly, but That's me.