John MacDonald: A regional tax for Christchurch Stadium? I say yes!

Te Kaha Multi-Purpose Indoor Arena. Image / Supplied

Something quite extraordinary happened yesterday.

10 Christchurch city councillors were writing to the head of Environment Canterbury regional council, asking her to get the mayors of Christchurch, Selwyn, Waimakariri, Ashburton and Hurunui into a room to talk about putting money on the table for the new Christchurch Stadium, Te Kaha.

By the way: are we still calling it the "new" stadium - or is it time we started calling it the "beleaguered" stadium.

We can't be far off calling it that, can we?

We've been talking about it for 11 years but there's nothing to show for all the talk - other than a big piece of empty land in the centre of town.

And today there's more talking, with city councillors meeting to decide the next steps in this whole torturous process - which is consulting the public on whether it should put another $150 million of ratepayer money into the stadium after last week's budget blowout announcement; or scale back the design to keep it in the budget; or put the whole thing on hold for a bit.

But what was extraordinary about yesterday, was that - even before today's meeting - we had 10 councillors taking it on themselves to get negotiations under way with the other local councils about having some skin in the game.

This is something the mayor and deputy mayor should have done months, if not years, ago.

But obviously, these 10 councillors are so frustrated that they've gone to ECAN themselves and asked it to get all the councils in a room together.

And they've done it without involving the mayor and the deputy mayor.

If you want to know who these councillors are: they are Sam MacDonald (who we'll be talking to shortly), Jake McLellan, James Gough, Phil Mauger, Aaron Keown, Pauline Cotter, Yani Johanson, Tim Scandrett, Jimmy Chen and Catherine Chu.

And let's not kid ourselves that these councillors are doing this solely for the benefit of the community.

All but two of them are seeking re-election later this year so we could easily make gags about them "grandstanding" and playing "political football" with the stadium issue.

And I see that some of the councillors who didn't put their name to the letter are saying that their colleagues are jumping the gun because Lianne Dalziel has a meeting lined up with ECAN next week.

But these 10 want all the councils brought into the tent.

As they absolutely should be.

There is no way Selwyn, Waimakariri, Hurunui and Ashburton should get away with putting nothing into the stadium.

The other thing these 10 councillors want ECAN to do - as well as bringing the councils together to talk turkey - is to introduce a regional rate or regional tax to cover some of the costs of building the stadium.

So that would mean any property owner living within ECAN's area of jurisdiction - which is north of the Waitaki River up to the Clarence River, just up from Kaikoura.

And inland to the boundary with the West Coast.

Anyone who owns a property within that ECAN boundary would pay a compulsory regional tax to help pay for the stadium.

This sort of thing was done to help pay for the Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin and the cake tin in Wellington - so it's not unheard of, and I think it's a brilliant idea.

Because let's face it, Waimakariri, Selwyn, Hurunui and Ashburton aren't going to commit money overnight, are they?

We've already had one of the mayors in the news this week saying "ooh, we'd have to talk to our ratepayers before we made any sort of commitment".

Which has election year written all over it, doesn't it?

So if ECAN just went ahead and introduced a regional tax for the stadium, we'd be on much firmer ground financially, and the Christchurch City Council could box on and get things under way.

You may have seen in the news too that even if it decided to scale back the design to keep it within budget, the extra design work that would have to be done would cost an extra $30 million anyway. This is in a report that's been done by council staff for councillors.

So it's looking more and more, isn't it, like the best course of action is going to be - has to be - sticking with the 30,000-seat design and sucking up the extra $150 million.

But Christchurch cannot - and should not - be doing that on its own. It would be shameful for ratepayers in Waimakariri, Selwyn, Hurunui and Ashburton to keep their hands in their pockets and not make some sort of contribution.

This is why I think the request to ECAN by this group of city councillors, to start work on a regional rate or a regional tax to help pay for the stadium, is a very good example of proactive leadership.

Because ECAN can do it whether the other councils want to put money into it or not.

Bang - in your ECAN rates bill, no room for discussion or weedling out.

It's been done elsewhere, do it here.