The long-term is the new health and wellness centre, with the new aquatic centre. The short-term is between now and then, and that's an undetermined time frame."

Reference is also made to the comments attributed to Councillor Inglis by the NDL on the 26 June 2019. "Councillor Inglis expressed concern that $119,417 had been allocated for maintenance of all of the six pools in the TRC region in the 2019-20 budget".

The question needs to be asked, how long is the short term and how long is the long term? Both City pools, the City Olympic and the Scully pools are in urgent need of maintenance. Council has previously admitted that maintenance has been inadequate for probably a decade.

The budget provision for the other four pools in the Council region is clearly inadequate. The Federal Member's office of Barnaby Joyce has advised that two sources of grant funding will be available this year.

A total of $150 million will be spent supporting the development of female change room facilities at sporting grounds and community swimming facilities across Australia through a new dedicated stream of funding for these activities.

The Government will also provide a further $40 million for a third round of its highly successful Community Sport Infrastructure Program (Bingara pool upgrade, Armidale tennis courts, Guyra Gun Club, Armidale's Harris park lighting already funded) which has funded 458 Local Sporting infrastructure projects nationwide already. The additional funding increases the Government's commitment to this program specifically, to $100 million.

We urge the Tamworth Regional Council to honour its community obligation to maintain all of the swimming pools in its care to the proper standard, at least to the level identified in the dilapidation reports by making application for the available grant funding.

Council should also consider undertaking refurbishment of the pools as outlined in our original submission to you in September of 2018.

Robyn Lang, Secretary

With very unwell mother in hospital, my family and I have been finding it very hard to get a park in the visitors car park 'B' at any time of the day on Monday to Friday but on weekends it is quite easy, therefore we can only presume that it is staff taking all the parks.

Rhonda Monckton, Westdale

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