Brian Holden: Huge maintenance bill unnecessary

'Keaney's Castle' is in need of a spruce up after years of wear and tear. Photo / Supplied

Sounds like it's crunch time at the Rotorua District Council, where "major concerns" with the condition of the building have been aired. Councillors have voted almost unanimously - all but one - to spend $3.9 million on renewals and upgrades to the Haupapa St building. Much of the work required is the result of "lapsed maintenance", such as ageing furniture, worn carpets, gaping holes in toilet roofs and even - to the mayor's shock, horror - a falling tile in her office.

We've been told by the council's chief financial officer Thomas Colle, that previous spending programmes had failed to ensure upkeep of the building.

I've always thought "Keaney's Castle" - as it has been infamously labelled, to be a smart-looking building with its architectural style holding up pretty well over the past 30 years. But over time, such edifices become tired because of wear and tear, with bits even falling off. Surely then, a realistic maintenance schedule should have been drawn up from day one to keep the building ship-shape to a standard of which Rotorua residents could be proud.

Clearly this hasn't happened with the current situation being the product of - dare I say, bad forward planning.

Somebody in the organisation simply hasn't done his or her job.

If I had let my own home fall into such disrepair, I would have only myself to blame.

The $3.9 million sounds like an awful lot, but who knows, perhaps that is what the delayed repairs will actually come to - maybe more. The point is, had the repairs been done over a decade or two or as they first came to light, we wouldn't have been slugged with such a huge bill and, in fact, probably would have saved unnecessary costs in the long run.

When it comes to ballooning maintenance necessities, Rotorua is not on its own. Buckingham Palace royal household has been recently the subject of woeful neglect of repairs, with its electrical wiring and boilers being over 60 years old and asbestos in need of removing. With its 775 rooms, the crumbling building is up for a massive repair bill. Mind you, it is 300 years old which I guess justifies the 150 million ($342 million) worth of work to fix the roofs and replace old wiring, ancient decorating and dated plumbing. But you have to wonder why someone didn't get on to this sooner.

Anyway, in order to allow the renovators to get stuck in and swing their hammers without decapitating any of the residents, it may be that the Queen and her family, corgis and all, will have to move out. Being an obviously major disruption, that won't go down well. Mind you, her Majesty does have a handful of castles throughout the United Kingdom where she can bed down comfortably until the work is finished.

As an aside, running monarchies doesn't come cheap, with official figures recently disclosing that the 89-year-old Queen spent 35.7 million in the past financial year. Her subjects - the people of Britain - however can take heart that she, her family and the household "continue to provide excellent value for money: at 56p per person annually".

Those are the reassuring words of the Queen's treasurer who is formally known as the Keeper of the Privy Purse.

I'm curious to know how he managed to arrive at that figure - and I wonder how much each person in Rotorua will have to cough up for their castle repairs.

"A big buzz" were the words of Rotorua's Springfield Superette owner Raj Kumar after hearing he had sold this week's $24.3m plus winning lotto ticket.

Great news too, he says, that, "It's gone to a good person [with] a lovely family, a very well deserving family."

Looks like they will be well on the way to own a whole castle of their very own.

-Brian Holden has lived in Rotorua for most of his life and has been writing his weekly column for 11 years.