An extraordinary meeting of the Invercargill City Council was ready to start on Tuesday, but councillors were left wondering briefly where the mayor was.
Council’s finance and assurance group manager Michael Day said the increase in required council input was due to lower estimated external funding and increased project costs because of the delay to the project. The project is now expected to cost $17.6m in total. The council has reduced its expectation for external funding contributions for ACI from $9.7m to just $3.5m. Day said the external funding predictions, as part of the 2018-2028 long-term plan, were based on outside advice. He said the emergence of Covid-19 had since changed the funding dynamic and the council also had a better understanding of what was realistic around funding.