Great Lakes Shire Council plans to oust more than 40 families from their holiday vans in Jimmy’s Beach Caravan Park, Hawks Nest and that’s just the beginning of their bureaucratic plan.
Once they get their hands on the Park they want to:
- Oust more than 40 families who loyally pay rent every month;
- Borrow millions to implement their plan for the park… are ratepayers prepared to pay these loans back if their plan does not work?
- Increase camping revenue by more than 60%... will young families struggling for a cheap holiday be hit even harder?;
- Spend money marketing their own new park, even though they closed the tourist information centre in Hawks Nest because they couldn’t afford to keep the doors open, which benefited everyone in the town;
- Base their plans success on an influx of tourists in the offseason, which the rest of the town knows won’t happen, and
- Make the off-season worse for local business by turfing out most of the families who support them in the off-season.
Upgrading the park is a fabulous idea, but even the residents of the Park can see their plan is set to fail just like Samurai Beach and by then it will be too late. Loyal residents of the Park will have been pushed out, the new accommodation will be just as empty in the off-season as all the holiday rental properties in town, the local business will have been hit even harder in the off-season and rate payers could be stuck with repaying their loan.
At the moment the Park runs at a profit, why start by throwing everyone out?
Voice your concerns, tell them you don’t support their half-baked ideas and send them back to the drawing board.
