Recreation & Open Space Planner at Midcoast Council | Member of Parks & Leisure Australia (PLA) National Advisory | JP, Mmnt, ASM, NEM, DFSM, CPLP
After 25 years in the parks and recreation (P&R) industry this is one of my "pet hates", and well done to Launceston for fixing it. Local government's purpose is the provision of services to their respective community. In relation to P&R this is in the form of providing facilities and enhancing/maintaining public open space. These facilities are provided according to a hierarchy, from Local to Regional. These facilities are used by their rate payers, and so their local council pays for them. What LG should not provide is State level facilities, as these are not for their rate payers. If the State wants an elite football stadium then they should fund and maintain it. There are too many councils around Australia maintaining State level facilities that should be the responsibility of their respective state governments. To their credit, some states are cleaning up this inappropriate situation.
The City of Launceston has this week formally voted to transfer the ownership of UTAS Stadium to Stadiums Tasmania. City of Launceston Mayor Matthew Garwood said while the stadium provided significant economic returns for the State and the entire Northern Tasmanian region, its operation until now had been funded entirely by ratepayers from the Launceston municipality. "Stadiums Tasmania has been specially developed to ensure our premiere sporting facilities in Tasmania are managed by experts in a unified and strategic way," Mayor Garwood said. Read more at https://bit.ly/48T9xRm
Principal of SPOART Advisory. Experienced senior executive and Board member| Public Sector senior leader| Infrastructure planning, delivery and management | Sports and Recreation expert| Arts| Local Government
4moI agree that State level facilities should be owned, operated and maintained by jurisdictional governments. That said, some of these also provide a local/district/regional service to ratepayers as well. I suppose if we wanted to take the debate to the nth degree we’d say States and Territories should not provide capital funding, sometimes the entire funding, for local, district and regional facilities because that’s the responsibility of local governments….not that I agree with that view.