$600k on a website for a building!

The Post reports:

A glitzy website launched to celebrate the opening of Wellington’s refurbished central library building Te Matapihi cost nearly $600,000, pushing the costs associated with the library opening to more than $800,000.

It was also developed and built by an Auckland company and has been denounced by one councillor as “gold-plated promotional spending”.

The Post was told, in an official information response that the production cost for the dedicated Te Matapihi website was $13,961.

However, it has since been discovered the full cost of designing and building it (the end-to-end delivery) was actually $595,801.

This is obscene. That wasn’t $600,000 on the library website where you borrow and reserve books. This was $600,000 on a website just to celebrate the new library building.

Think what this indicates about the contempt for ratepayers who fund WCC. Think what this indicates about why project after project blows out massively in cost. It is a culture problem. How did no in management not say “Hey no effing way are we spending $600,000 on a website for a building?”