A Tauranga resident believes the Historic Village's recently revealed million dollar debt is a ruse to justify the city council charging the TECT $1 million for the village green.

Citizens have been led to believe the village was paying its own way for years, now suddenly there is a million dollar debt, says Hylton Rhodes.

TECT hub will occupy the village green. Image: Tauranga City Council Website.

'Up until a couple of years ago, we were all told the village was self-sustaining. Then suddenly, bingo! There's a cost of $1 million. It just came out of the blue.”

The debt was revealed last month by financial controller Kathryn Sharplin.

In reply to councillors' questions, chief financial officer Paul Davidson says the $1 million has accumulated over five years because the village doesn't earn enough for the council to cover depreciation costs.

Because of the Historic Village debt, council staff want councillors to consider amending the revenue and financing policy in the Annual Plan to allow the village to be bailed out by rates.

'You can't have depreciation on those buildings because they don't depreciate. It's just a cock and bull story,” says Hylton.

'The council is going to sell the land to TECT for a million dollars and this is going to pay off the Tauranga village debt. Not only that, the village has been so badly run that several of the tenants have left owing thousands of dollars' worth of bills. If it was run decently there would be no debt anyhow.

'All of a sudden this million dollar debt appeared out of nowhere at the same convenient time TECT said, we will give you a million for the land - provided you get the land ready for us. And how much is that going to cost?”

At the November 2015 council meeting, the fact that the village green is a swamp was openly discussed.

'I didn't realise it's a damn swamp,” says TECT chairman Bill Holland at that meeting. 'There's a spring there. I didn't realise that. I often wondered why it wasn't used more often and the answer is it is wet, too wet to sit on.”

TECT obtained an engineering report that says building the proposed two storey building on site will cost, but it can be done.

'We have said at the outset, we will pay what it is worth, less what it costs to make it worth what it is,” says Bill.

'If the council want to do the whole thing itself, it can. That will be great if you can get the land to the state where it can actually be built on, then we will buy it.”

The Tauranga Energy Consumer's Trust wants to build a two storey, $10 million community services hub on about 4,790m2 of land currently occupied by the Envirohub building, which TECT will relocate once final approval is obtained.

'It was always self-sustaining, no problems and all of a sudden there's this monster debt,” says Hylton.

'People have wanted to re-open the café a couple of times and they have not been allowed to. It's been deliberately run down, deliberately, for this wonderful project to go ahead.

'People don't want it there taking up the village green. (Councillor) Catherine Stewart was very naughty saying it (The TECT Community hub) was going to enhance the village green. There's going to be no village green.

"It's a big building, height-wise, and also area-wise and there's a carpark as well. The village green has gone, and she asked this dumb question whether it would enhance the village green.”

There is a video of how the village use to look before Tauranga City Council took over, here.