Timaru's mayor says he'll poll his council on whether the town should pay towards Christchurch's newly green lit stadium but he knows the answer already - it's a hard no.
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Christchurch city councillors on Thursday gave the go-ahead to build the contentious $683 million stadium.
The city received the largest amount of submissions on a public consultation in a decade.
The project board negotiated a fixed-price contract for the arena, following a $150m budget blowout blamed on rising international construction costs.
The government pledged $220 million but did not intend to help the council cover the budget blowout.
It had been suggested other Canterbury councils could kick in to help Christchurch City cover the cost with National MP Gerry Brownlee floating the idea of a contribution based on population size.
Timaru mayor Nigel Bowen told Checkpoint he didn't think Timaru ratepayers would be keen.
"I would have a guess that we'd probably have 90 percent against."
He said it would be like asking Hamilton residents to pay for a stadium in Auckland.
There was a fair case that if Timaru supported Christchurch they'd have to support Dunedin too, he said.
"We're sort of caught in the middle, we're 160km from Christchurch, we're not too much further to get to Dunedin, a lot of people travel for just that reason so 160km is a tall order to ask for support," he said.
"We've got our own stadiums, our own projects to fund so I think it'll be a little bit out of the box to be asking us so far away, so a big no to Gerry on that one."
The facilities were a real burden on taxpayers, he said.
"The wider benefit is certainly not there. We don't get any benefit out of hospitality, benefit out of hotels, those sort of things so the ask for Timaru ratepayers to support it - happy to do some informal polling and ask the questions at our next meeting but I'm pretty sure the asnwer that I get."
