Letter to the Editor

I am writing to inform the Hay public that the Hay hydrotherapy pool has at this stage been shelved.

As reported in your paper recently the tender for the project came in $500,000 over budget.

I would like to point out that the views of this letter are mine personally and not necessarily the views of the Hay Hydrotherapy Pool committee.

I would also like to say that the reference to Council administration in this letter is to the General Manager, David Webb because he is the man who pulls the levers.

Firstly, I would like to congratulate Hay Shire Council on successfully getting the funding for the 50 -metre pool replacement.

A wonderful result for a lot of hard work and a fantastic asset for Hay going into the future.

An old mate of mine, who incidentally donated the first $500 to our pool project said to me, “in life you have to take the s##t with the sugar, so to Council administration, you have just had the sugar.

After five years of working to get the pool built with Hay Shire Council, I can honestly say that our committee – Sally Smith Jean Woods, Lofty Walter, Jenny Dwyer and Prue Pocock did all they possibly could to get this facility built and operational and to get crunched at the end with a $500,000 shortfall was a cruel blow to us, and more so to the people of Hay who have been waiting for a heated pool for 30 years.

I would like to thank our committee for their efforts.

I could not have worked with a more dedicated and supportive group of people than these individuals who have been doing volunteer work in our community for decades.

You don’t raise $1.1 million without having a crack.

Hay Shire councillors have over the last five years been by and large supportive of the therapy pool, with one councillor donating $1000 to the project.

They proved that in May last year when the General Manager sent out a memo to all the councillors the night before the council meeting, and I quote: “Given that Council is grappling with whether it can afford the pool replacement then I feel that we (Council and the community) certainly cannot afford the hydrotherapy pool. The project should be parked and not proceed, and grant funding received be returned with the community raised funds to remain in a separate Council reserve for future use.”

Unquote.

Our committee had no warning that this was the General Manager’s position and neither did the councillors.

Fortunately, after a passionate address to Council the next day, it voted 8-0 to proceed with the pool.

We had to overcome a lot of obstacles along the way and I am preparing a full report of the five years we spent working with Council on the hydrotherapy pool so the public can be fully informed of what occurred.

Grant money to be returned – oh my goodness.

The events of the last two months since the tenders were announced have been a confronting and extremely stressful time for myself and our committee.

I have been doing volunteer work in Hay since 1980 because I enjoy it, but have never experienced the treatment our committee was subject to following the completion of the tender process in November.

It is completely unacceptable for this to happen because volunteers for community projects are as scarce as hen’s teeth and their views and decisions should be respected.

The reason why our committee decided to return the money to the grants office was because it was given to us to specifically to build a therapy pool and nothing else.

Bendigo Bank gave us a $60,000 grant towards the project and withdrew that money for exactly the same reason.

So, for the last five years of working with Hay Shire Council and the General Manager putting in countless hours at meetings, putting forward budgets under the General Manager’s guidance, sorting tens of thousands of bottles and cans, travelling to Temora, Bendigo and Echuca to visit therapy pools for research and organising auctions which raised $24,000 thanks to our generous public, we raised $1.1 million to build the therapy pool.

Do readers really think we do not have the community’s interests at heart?

And for all this effort, we stand condemned for returning the money.

Well, we take that blame as a ‘golden handshake’ from Hay Shire Council for our daring to dream of building a therapy pool in Hay.

I think if you want to sit in judgement as an armchair critic, you should get in the driver’s seat and have a crack yourself.

Council has given up on building a therapy pool in Hay but I haven’t.

Council had three opportunities to build a therapy pool in Hay in the last five years, and did not take on any of those opportunities.

This is not so much a letter to the editor, but a blue print for battle lines.

Yours sincerely Sandy Symons.