Richard Moore's Straight Talk Columns

Baypark buyout could be horror show

21/6/2011

AS ANY horror movie fan can tell you the best and most frightening films are those that build up tension before scaring the bejesus out of you with a maniac leaping out of a cupboard, or grabbing you from the back seat of a car.

There have been so many times that I've been sitting in the dark of a cinema, or lounge, with my tummy rising to the back of my mouth as the pretty gal reaches for the handle on a closed door.

You know she shouldn't do it.

She's wearing a skimpy outfit - always dangerous in horror flicks - and none of her friends are yet dead, meaning she's victim number one.

''Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it,'' you silently plead with her. ''You're too cute to die.''

But deep down you know that means she's cursed. Pretty girls don't survive such movies that often.

Her hand continues it's death-seeking journey and touches the handle, slowly turning it. The door creaks as she pulls it open, peering into the darkness of its confines.

All of a sudden ''Aaaaaah!'' she screams - as a wicked-looking knitting needle stabs into her ear, or a butcher's knife sticks out through her abs.

''Waaaaaah!'' I go, jumping a metre into the air and sending my popcorn flying off like a Chilean ash cloud around the room.

''Shhuuussshhhh,'' everyone yells, to the pitter patter of gently falling puffs of corn.

Some mean types suggest I go to a drive-in, so when I scream like a girly-boy it will only burst my eardrums in a car at the Baypark drive-ins, rather than everyone's in a cinema or loungeroom.

Sigh. People don't understand sensitive types like me.

But, and this may surprise a few officials, they do understand the dangers of increasing public debt.

Like a pretty horror-movie actress about to be relegated to the past tense, people in Tauranga are scared what the ''commercially sensitive'' - read secretive - buyout of Baypark Speedway is going to cost them.

City officials are silent about the price of Tauranga bankrolling the buyout of a nine-year speedway contract by its offshoot Tauranga City Venues Limited.

TCVL will be managing the adjacent indoor sport and exhibition centre and its stated reason for the purchase is that it could not afford to have a clash of dates, and interests, for the two major facilities.

Clearly no one has ever heard of making a free phone call and talking about future scheduling.

At a confidential meeting in late April it was decided that council would guarantee the buyout which, in view of no publicised costings, was estimated by the media at hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Now that piqued my interest, as when public authorities go secret my nerves start to twitch.

TCVL chairman Graeme Elvin has said the deal ''will give us greater control and flexibility, and will enable us to manage the whole (Baypark) site in an integrated way. This in turn gives us a much stronger base from which to meet the financial objectives ...''

Ummm, yes, that all sounds like fabulous non-speak. What does it mean?

Greater flexibility and control does not mean making a profit or, indeed, breaking even. And one presumes those are the financial objectives.

A quick finger count had me more nervous than Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween.

Speedway events attract an average crowd of 5000, paying between $20 for adults and $45 a family for each meeting. So let's say each race earns about $100,000.

There are between 14 to 18 speedway events a season. Earnings are conservatively anywhere between $1.4 and $1.8 million a season. Take away the $200,000 paid to council by the Speedway organiser and staffing costs - say $100,000 a year - and the event still brings in more than $1 million a year.

Now the council-controlled organisation TCVL has bought out nine years of that operation. Is that hundreds of thousands of dollars? Or just under $10 million of extra debt guaranteed by Tauranga City Council?

It may be that taking over the Speedway is a good business judgment. But we won't know because there is a veil of secrecy lowered by council over the deal.

''WAAAAAAH!!!''

Sorry, just practising for when the financial ramifications of this deal eventually come to light.

richard@richardmoore.com