Letter to the Editor: Sawtell Pool and the Draft Aquatic Strategy

DEAR News of the Area,

I would like to respond to the letters in NOTA 23 January relating to both the Sawtell Pool and the Draft Aquatic Strategy.

I was interested to read about the management of the Sawtell pool and reserve.

From everything I have read and spoken to Council about, the pool will remain under the management of Council and there are no plans in the immediate future to change this.

I agree with Bob Harris that the information session was poorly timed and extremely badly coordinated.

At no time did [Council staff] actually provide information to the people attending as a group.

What happened was that individuals approached the staff and voiced their opinions.

Personally, I found that this meant that many of the attendees, including myself, did not have an opportunity to ask questions or express their opinions.

In relation to the comments about people being “reluctant or unable to fill in council forms or data-based designed feedback sheets”, I would like to say that I put it “out there” that I was prepared to assist anyone to make a submission.

Admittedly, this was via social media but I did ask if people could get my offer to friends etc. who may not be on social media.

Maybe an old-fashioned letterbox drop might have been more effective but time prohibited me from doing that.

In relation to the Draft Aquatic Strategy, I too posed the question on the Sawtell Community page on Facebook about the use of external consultants for creating the strategy.

Here is part of the response from our Mayor Nikki Williams: “The simple answer is that some projects need very specific expertise [that] we don’t require full-time. It’s usually more practical and more cost-effective to bring that expertise in for a short period rather than employ someone permanently.”

You can read her response in its entirety after her post on 17 January.

I agree that public submissions – including at Council’s public forum – have, in the past, been ignored.

When I addressed Council about the returning of the grant for both Sawtell and Woolgoolga pools, I may as well have been speaking to a brick wall as clearly the majority of councillors were only interested in one thing and that definitely was not the need to upgrade these pools.

Roger Tindale wrote about the importance of having a learn to swim program locally and I totally agree with that.

If it can’t be operated by current Council employees, then organisations such as the Royal Life Saving Society and the Department of School Education (School Sports Unit) could be approached to see if they can offer this.

Emily Struik

Toormina