Council has rethink over Artworks leases

DIANA WORTHY

Council is having a re-think over new hybrid leases for the art gallery and a waste group after listening to doubts over how much profit they make.

The decision came at a meeting of Auckland City Council’s community services committee last week.

The committee voted to defer granting new commercial hybrid leases for the community cinema, community art gallery, and the Waste Resource Trust - all based in council-owned buildings at Artworks, in Oneroa.

Officers had already decided all three made cash from commercial activities as well as providing community benefits so would not qualify for community leases of $500 per year plus GST.

But councillors have now asked officers to look again at financial figures for the art gallery and trust and report back to next month’s meeting.

Meanwhile, the gallery could be hit with a bill of more than $10,000 for back-rent.

The committee wants officers to try and get the matter sorted out before the committee meets again next month.

The committee’s decisions this month will mean a hybrid lease for the  cinema costing $1,419 in the first year, $2,838 in the second, and $4,300 until the lease ends in 2014.

The figures all include GST and are in line with officers’ original recommendations, despite pleas from the Waiheke Community Board for the cheaper community leases.

Board deputy chairman Herb Romaniuk appeared at the meeting to renew arguments for all three facilities’ activities to be seen as community ones rather than commercial.

Mr Romaniuk says the board had passed two resolutions against the hybrids but got a “typical” response from the committee last week.

“The arguments went down like a lead balloon. We did not get traction.”

He claims councillors responded by saying they represented the present council and would say what they wanted as policy for Auckland, with no exemptions for the island.

Councillors Graeme Easte and Richard Northey both made efforts to change the committee’s mind but lost out when it came to a vote.

Hauraki Gulf islands’ councillor Denise Roche was unable to speak or vote on the cinema and trust because of a conflict of interest.

She is disappointed with the outcome and says council fails to understand how the island is different.

“I often get the sense that council just can’t get its head around the fact that Waiheke is different from everywhere else on the isthmus.

“There’s a real unwillingness to adjust a new policy - the hybrid lease policy - that just doesn’t fit with the leasing arrangements for all the community organisations at Artworks.”

Ms Roche believes the policy was set up to specifically apply to community organisations undertaking commercial activities from council-leased properties that compete with businesses offering the same or similar.

She says she is also appalled at the length of time it has taken to sort the leases out.

- Waiheke Marketplace