Christchurch ratepayers will contribute $7 million towards the Christ Church Cathedral, despite uncertainty surrounding its restoration.

Councillors discussed the funding at a public meeting today but couldn’t revoke the decision since it was made during Lianne Dalziel’s administration.

Cr Sara Templeton had reservations, suggesting it would be better to wait and see if the Government contributes additional funds.

Cr Sam MacDonald said, “This is about an agreed-upon process and releasing funds to hopefully help the cathedral complete itself. Personally, I think if we didn’t do this today, we might as well get the scaffolding out now and lock the place up. Imagine the signal that was sent to Wellington that we don’t even have confidence in the good people who are running it to actually deliver this project. This is a process that the chief executive has been very transparent about by bringing it to the council table when they didn’t need to. If there was a concern at the time, councillors of the day should have put amendments up to change the delegations. Clearly, they didn’t.”

Cr Yani Johanson said, “I obviously appreciate that we cannot make a decision to defund the cathedral. We’re just receiving the information. I just hope we reflect and maybe learn some lessons around when we make these decisions going forward.”

Cr Melanie Coker said, “From what I’ve seen, the cathedral will be completed. It took 40 years to build it initially, so it may take another 40 years to rebuild it, but we as leaders of the city, with this building at its heart, with the same name as our city, should be positive about this project. I don’t want to hear negative things about it because it’s not helpful. It might hold it up. We don’t want to hold up a development that’s happening, and we want to say positive things about it so that any potential funders will provide that money. If we say we’re not sure about whether we will look at further funding for it or putting through the $7 million for this project, we’ll have a broken building in the centre of our city for eternity. It will never be demolished. It will remain like that if it’s not fully funded to be repaired. Do we want that? I think no. So please, please be positive about this project.”

Deputy Mayor Pauline Cotter agreed. “I think we need to be ambassadors for our city, and that is in our central city. It’s not about whether you agree with the restoration or not. That decision has been made. This is a noting report to honour our agreement that we made with the restoration team in 2018, so to me, it’s a signal of good faith, and it’s good faith from the chief executive to bring this noting report to us as well. I think the project looks a lot better than it did after the earthquake. Let’s go forward and wish them well.”

Cr Tyler Harrison-Hunt said, “It is the main character of our city, and it’s also named after our city, so therefore I’m indifferent in this. But I also understand Councillor Templeton’s sentiment and also those ratepayers who did consistently report about their issues around ratepayer money and putting bad money after good. But in the same light, I’m also seeing the benefits of the cathedral and what it does for our city in terms of so many different things, economic development, tourism, making sure that we’re proud of something that we’ve got here after a horrendous earthquake. We’re seeing that there’s a rebuild, and this is the last piece of the puzzle, in my opinion, that needs to be built to make sure that we’re continuing to be resilient.”

Cr Tim Scandrett said, “Let’s let them get on with it. Leave them alone to do it. Whether they come back to us for further funding or not is up to them. I was not a fan of the original $10 million, but I recognise we have to, as a city, move forward and we would still be in court.”