Hiding behind Tweed Shire Council walls on $180,000 dollars pay cheque, council’s Director of Community and Natural Resources (yet another Troy Green appointed acolyte) informs us that our library at Tweed Heads has been shut down for up to nine months because there were no other alternatives.
Ms Stinson ‘Mobile library keeps bookworms on a roll’ hardly true!
The mobile library stocks less than 100 adult books and only comes once every two weeks to service 73,000 people north of the river?
When I went in last Monday, the six or so people trying to get a book in the mobile library were bumping into each.
If you don’t believe me, have a go at it yourself. In two weeks’ time.
This is this not what we pay rates for.
Now to the good bits, councils defence, according to Ms Stinson (I’ll do whatever Troy Green says) runs like this:
Defence 1: ‘Tweed Regional Library Staff have worked hard to minimise the disruption’.
The truth is the Tweed Library staff wanted a shop front for library users and a number of sites had been selected but council i.e. our General Manager Troy Green didn’t want to pay. ‘Not in the budget,’ he said.
Defence 2: ‘The Auditorium was booked up to 12 months ago for events in 2017’.
What? Didn’t council know 12 months ago the Tweed Library was going to be closed down for up to nine months in 2017?
Defence 3: (the silliest) ‘The specially designed timber (parquetry) flooring in the auditorium would not be able to withstand the impact and weight of library shelving’.
Even a 12-year-old would know that one could slip something under each library shelf to save the parquetry flooring.
Truth is, if we sacked Ms Stinson, not to mention Troy Green, the 1/2 million dollar salaries savings could put a ‘full library’ any where at all in Tweed Heads, including the main shopping centres, for the next 2 years or more.
Why should 73,000 people who pay millions i.e. about 60 per cent of the rates a year (north of the river) suffer for nine months of virtually no library services for two over-paid ‘uncaring Stalin like boffins’ in the Tweed bureaucracy.
T. Sharples, Tweed Heads
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