Balloon fest in naming stoush

Balloons Over Waikato organisers have withstood Hamilton City Council pressure to have Waikato's largest free public event rebranded as Balloons over Hamilton.

The council's events sponsorship sub-committee asked the trust to change the name when the trust applied for a five-figure sum towards the $750,000 event, scheduled for March 24-28 at Innes Common and Waikato University.

But after consulting with other major funders, Balloons Over Waikato Charitable Trust rejected the council's suggested re-branding.

Council sub-committee chairwoman Kay Gregory pledged that would be the end of the matter, with funding – likely to be confirmed at tonight's council meeting – not considered at risk as a result of the rejection.

But the council's attempt has come under fire from Tania Hennebry, chairwoman of the Wel Energy Trust, the major funder of the ballooning event. She said tagging a name change request to an application for funding was inappropriate.

"I was a little surprised," she said. "Personally I would have thought it was their event, not a Hamilton City Council event, and they have put quite a bit of time and energy into branding it.

"It is a Waikato event with quite an appropriate name. This is not the V8s. The balloons go over the whole region. I would have thought its name said that already."

Balloons over Waikato trust manager Michele Connell was reluctant to comment on the saga, calling it "an in-house thing".

"We get a number of name change requests over the years and as a board look at it prudently," she said. "But we are not changing. The name will stay.

"We feel comfortable with the name as it is and hope there will be no drop in funding."

Ms Gregory said a name change would have been in keeping with the council's policy of seeking to ensure ratepayer-funded sponsorship gave the best possible return.

"We have always had a wish for it to be called Balloons Over Hamilton but never had any success," she said. "This was a last-ditch effort to get them to change.

"They had a meeting with stakeholders and came back and said `it can't be done'.

Despite the knockback, she said the event would be getting an increase in funding next year.

"We didn't want to get off-side with them, and will continue to support it, because it is hugely important to the city."

The annual festival attracts about 30 hot-air balloons from around New Zealand for five days and draws tens of thousands of spectators.

Others on the council sub-committee, which reports to the City Development Committee, are councillor Angela O'Leary, communications manager Philip Burton and community representatives Paul Goddard and Jeanette Tyrrell.

Wel Energy Trust is still working through its grants round for 2010 but it provided $70,000 to the event last year.