Group A lead candidate in the Council Elections, Kaye Sharples has called for a change to the local library system.
Kaye, a qualified Librarian herself, said the ratepayers of the Tweed and Richmond region had “enjoyed one of the State’s best and most cost effective library services under the Richmond-Tweed Regional Library Agreement formally run by Director Martin Field” over the past 15 years but that had changed.
“We had some of the best performance statics in the State, we were in the top 10”, said Kaye.
“The inter Council partnership was successful and effective.
“In 2011 dark clouds descended when the Library Committee made up of Dot Holden and Katie Milne and the former General Manager of the Tweed Shire Mike Raynor agreed to pass a resolution allowing the Lismore Council to take over all of the Tweed Shires library assets including staffing.
“Tweed Shire was the largest contributor to the joint agreement, we contributed over 40% of the funding, said Kaye.
“When Lismore took over Martin contract was paid out and he was dropped to allow several layers of Lismore Management to take over the 5.2 million dollars of library assets.
“Since the Lismore takeover everything has been going downhill at an unbelievable pace.
“At Tweed you cannot even get a car park at the library most of the time. At the same time all this was taking place the old Council refused a deal with the Gold Coast Council to allow Tweed residents to continue to access the Coolangatta library. Tweed residents now have to pay an annual fee of $120 to do so.”
She said it was time to correct these extremely poor management decisions.
