Byron Shire councillors recently decided – by a close margin – to hand over our two public swimming baths (Mullumbimby and Byron Bay) to a large Melbourne-based company.
This tender decision is about money, and not the health and welfare of local ratepayers.
This out of touch classic neo-con decision will lead to the following: The corporation will enter into a concerted advertising campaign to offer entrepreneurial groups leases, which will basically lead to our pools being used for private gain at various times. In practice, this means that at all usage times, ratepayers will be excluded from these areas in part, or in whole.
So if you are a ratepaying, entry paying lap swimmer, you will be corralled into fewer swimming lanes, while profit takers lease the bulk of the pool.
This is not what these pools were created for.
They were created for the health and welfare and leisure of our local community.
This has happened in numerous other towns and cities in Australia.
Surely this is privatisation gone mad, when a public-funded community facility is handed over to a large corporation which then proceeds to sublease components of our community-owned pools to smaller for-profit businesses to the exclusion of Byron ratepayers, who are the actual collective owners of these facilities.
I have no doubt that Council administration received a pitch, and were schmoozed by the corporation chosen to take over our community-owned pools.
The senior Council administrators then pitched it to our elected councillors on the basis of financial advantages, the less intellectually capable councillors then voted for it more in alignment with their political ambition than their concern for the welfare of our community.
Make a note of the councillors who voted for this change, lobby them against this move and don’t vote for them at the next Council election.
Ian Clements, Byron Bay
The councillors who voted to award the pool tenders to Belgravia Leisure were Michael Lyon, Jack Dods, David Warth, Janet Swain and Peter Dougherty (replacing Asren Pugh). The company appears to have contrasting reviews online. – Letter Ed
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
