Galigali Perkins, South Golden Beach
It was interesting to read that our mayor finds it hard to believe that Byron Bay doesn’t have a skatepark and plans to spend ratepayers moneys to install one and even fund workshops about it.
Then there is the huge $55,000 lighthouse replica to be installed on the $5.6 million roundabout going into Byron… I wonder if these are being funded by the parking- meter revenue? Or maybe this is why we have been hit with the huge rates increase?
I would have thought that most ratepayers, myself included, would prefer our money spent on roads, drains and other vital infrastructure.
But perhaps I’m mistaken because here in South Golden Beach, where we have been waiting years for roads and drains, when the council did propose some effective drainage, that could have led to better roads, a few self- serving folk managed to stop it going ahead as it would have required clearing the gardens that they’d planted on the Council-owned nature strips. Some folks have planted gardens all the way to the bitumen and then park their cars on the narrow strip of road left. Others have used the nature strip to set up permanent caravan sites that I hear they rent out. Does the council benefit in anyway from this use of their land?
As the numbers of secondary dwellings keeps increasing the open land for rainwater to be absorbed decreases and the volume of cars parking on the streets increases so the need for drainage becomes ever more important, and yet our council chose to ignore the common sense that would have installed effective drains – utilising the nature strip – and instead installed much less effective ‘spoon drains’ (basically pits to hold some water).
