I hate this story - the case of Dunedin's lines company (Aurora) is not a matter of simple underinvestment - a decade or so ago the city built an indoor stadium

I hate this story - the case of Dunedin's lines company (Aurora) is not a matter of simple underinvestment - a decade or so ago the city built an indoor stadium, it cost hundreds of millions more than they originally claimed, and the local rugby community welched on the 'private fundraising' they promised to bring to the table - the city got stuck having to pay for it all, plus rather than making the promised small annual profit it needs to be subsidised to the tune of millions every year. The stadium is owned by the same city owned holding company that owns Aurora(as well as a couple of other companies) - they effectively balance off the money made from Aurora with losses from the stadium - this allows them to avoid taxes on the profits from Aurora (a perfectly legal process). However - and here's the real problem - Aurora (and the other companies) were not making enough money to cover the loan servicing - the holding company put immense pressure on the various companies to produce more income (profit) Aurora seems to have done it by reducing the amount of money it spent on maintenance .... now they're dealing with the results from years of missed maintenance and are trying to get the people living around Dunedin (and in it) to pay more to effectively cover that money taken out for the stadium. Really they need to raise ticket prices at the stadium to cover these losses and make the stadium self funding - at the moment we subsidise every rugby ticket from our power bills and from our rates (property taxes)