BE Brooks, Byron Bay
If the councillors are so confused about the demographic of their constituents and what we want, as Cr Spooner (and Cr Ndiaye) in another paper seems to be, perhaps it’s time to bring in a market researcher – to tell them who we are.
It is not rocket science. People live here to escape from big shiny metal things, concrete shopping centres, and over-development.
The environment is important. Every friend who lives here and those who don’t have said that sculpture was the most un-Byron thing they had ever seen.
There are plenty of small businesses working their hardest and spending their own money to create interesting and beautiful places and spaces in the Arts & Industry Estate, so to be confronted with the aluminium lighthouse every day was hard to stomach.
Ostrich politics is when the council lets Gold Coast developers increase building heights (for what?) and sit on their hands over holiday letting and allows the wedding industry to run amok.
It’s not all about how much money you can make out of Byron.
It’s about trying to keep what makes it a great place to live – and more people would be able to live here if half the town weren’t rented to holidaymakers.
That’s the big picture Cr Spooner.