Ballina Council’s complicity in the loss of local input and control of more than half of Hampton Park is revealed in the Hampton Park Draft Master Plan.
The area under lease to Cherry Street Sports Club, which covers as much as half of Hampton Park, and was recently expanded, is not considered in the Draft Master Plan. Ballina Council’s earlier decisions mean that the sports club’s leases over public land are now managed or will shortly be managed by Crown Lands, as business operations are not permitted on public recreation land. Local input is now stymied and the decisions about the management and use of the Cherry Street Sports Club lease areas rest with a state department.
Lucky Ballina – decisions affecting open green space that has been whittled away is now at the mercy of state governments of the calibre of the incompetent and inept current government that is in thrall to registered clubs and the gambling industry.
The draft plan opens the door for yet further loss of local decision making and control. The plan proposes that an access road, for the sole benefit of Cherry Street Sports Club, runs from Moon Street to the sports club loading dock. The reason is that the access road from Burnet Street is unsafe as it runs between the tennis courts. This hazard has been recognised since its impermissible construction. The safety issues should and could be managed by Council actually doing something such as imposing a schedule on when delivery vehicles use the access road so the times avoid when children are using the tennis courts.
Instead of a simple solution that actually requires the sports club to be responsible for the safe management of deliveries the Draft Plan proposes a more hazardous access route from Moon Street that gobbles up more open green space, threatens the iconic fig tree in the long term and cuts through an area of the park that is used for passive recreation.
If Council adopts the Draft Plan on exhibition the community will end up with loss of open green space, a more hazardous solution to a hazard that has been ignored for 25 years as this hazard benefits the sports club.
Cherry Street Sports Club, whose express wish is for more parking on Hampton Park, is privileged by Council as they were explicitly involved in negotiations about the access road, not the neighbours who have to put up with the hazards.
The Draft Master Plan is another example of Council bending over backwards to accommodate a business with operating revenue of $18,475 475 poker machine revenue of $5,708,627 (a staggering $109,000 per week sucked out of the Ballina economy), and payments to directors totalling $60,270.
People often comment that the sports club contributes so much. The club grants transactions totalled $50,250 and sponsorship totalled $137,000. So, the sport club’s total contributions of $187,250 are less than two weeks poker machine revenue or three times the amount paid to directors.
The sporting clubs who accept the sports club sponsorship presumably would not accept tobacco sponsorship, yet the cost and adverse effects on the community of poker machines are far more pervasive and destructive than those of tobacco.
The Draft Plan illustrates Council’s complicity in normalising and whitewashing the harm that poker machines inflict, and the corruption of the values conveyed by sports relying on this insidious business.
The Draft Plan inflicts a cost on the Ballina community for the benefit of one business.
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