It's the old maxim of socialise your costs and privatise your profits - all the while Council sits on its hands about a lousy safety barrier for the wharf.

There has to be a benefit to the whole shire to justify building a ring road around the Tathra headland and maintaining the wharf - not just day trippers having a feed.

The Tathra Wharf is starting to smell more like Circular Quay.

John Cafe

Bega

Open letter to the Bega Valley Shire Mayor and Councillors.

It is with dismay that I again read about the council’s decision regarding the Tathra Ring Road (BDN, 27/2).

This situation has been going on, in my opinion, for way too long – over seven years at least.

During this time costs are increasing and will continue to do so the longer no decision in made.

How much does each feasibility study cost and how many do you actually need to realise that a ring road is the only feasible outcome to a long-time problem with accessing the Tathra Wharf?

Why do you think a walking track would ease the congestion of the traffic to and from the wharf or enable more to be able to access it?

Have you ever seen the number of cars that go down Wharf Rd only to have to find somewhere to turn around and come back out because there’s nowhere to park?

Worse still is watching buses having to reverse back up if they missed the sign saying it’s unsuitable for them.

If they could travel down, drop off their (mostly elderly) passengers, continue up the ring road and then go back to pick them up after they have checked out our great wharf, museum and café, how much more sensible would that be rather than doing a U-turn and leaving town?

Maybe you could put a car counter on the road to see just how much traffic this road-to-nowhere takes.

I agree with Crs Taylor and Allen where Bill says the wharf needs adequate vehicle access and Tony’s that it needs a one-way road and that with modern engineering this can be achieved, with stronger button-pushing.

As it was suggested at the meeting to undertake community consultation, go for it and ask bus/tour and delivery companies as well for their opinions.

This could result in ratepayers having more of a say in how this is resolved rather than it coming down to a decision won by a solitary vote by councillors.

I understand funding is always an issue, but both Federal and State Governments pledged financial support in 2012 at the 150th birthday celebration of Tathra Wharf.

Both MPs state at the celebration that, with their assistance, it was now only up to BVSC to set it all in motion.

Where did that money go?

Tathra Wharf needs a one-way ring road with a suitable drop-off point at the wharf to avoid the current unsafe situation.

I really hope that you can see fit to agree with this logical solution in the very near future so as not to continue wasting money on feasibility studies and the idea of a cheaper, but unsuitable, walkway.

Rosemary Brittliff

Bega

Your front page story on the Littleton Gardens budget blowout (BDN, 6/3) confirms that work costed at $680,000 ended up costing $1.3million. 

Money earmarked for our park should not have been spent on stormwater infrastructure. 

Your story demonstrates that either councillors and the community were misled by claims that works to the Gipps St car park are necessary because of the next stage of the Littleton Gardens project, or council was unaware there is no money left for the next stage of that project.

Either way, both of these scenarios are unacceptable. 

Work on Zingel Place around the new council chambers (town hall) will be proceeding of course. 

Efforts to link the Gipps St car park renovation to other projects in town simply aim to justify removing access to properties next to the car park to make it easier to sell to developers. 

Lack of accountability for major project stuff-ups, council decisions that negatively impact the local community, privatisation of community assets, why?

Judy Geary

Bega

On Saturday, when strolling through the Bermagui Fisherman's Co-op car park, I came across two professional fishermen atop a boat on a trailer merrily slicing up large sharks and relieving the critters of all their fins. 

These two custodians of the seas were impervious to the tourists around or to the hygiene values of performing such surgery in the open air. 

When questioned (politely of course) about such a practice, I was confronted by a tirade of abuse impregnated with a wondrous array of four letter words and something about "this is my living".

He appeared not to understand that it is also my living and in fact it is the whole community’s living.

But should this practice be legal and our custodians of the sea need to make some pocket money out of selling their 100 buckaroo a kilo fins then surely the hygiene aspect and the visual impact on tourism must kick in. 

They could of course ritualise it and make it a spectacle - "Yippee"!

Joe Ruiz-Avila

Cobargo

As a first time submitter I have two issues to raise, firstly the Bali drug leaders. 

I do not support the money, time and effort that has gone, and continues to go on, in an endeavour to prevent their execution. 

It is common knowledge as to the penalty for committing such a crime, yet they were quite okay about it believing they would get away with it. 

And chances are had they got away with it and made the "easy" money they would have done it again.

Dare I even mention the victims of their crime had they been successful, but that clearly would be un-Australian of me for we all know that in the land of OZ the guilty have far more rights and are more deserving of our aid and compassion than any sucker victim. 

My second issue I raise given the current political environment in the hope that others may see the value and speak up. 

It involves our school age children and the teaching of foreign languages. 

Why must we embark on such pandering to foreign neighbours when as a sovereign nation we have the right to see to our own people first?

I advocate that instead of teaching a foreign language in schools that we teach sign language, thus opening up communication with children and adults (Australians) who are otherwise isolated. 

Children could not only learn and be assessed in doing so, but could gain a truly valuable skill that a greater percentage could use throughout their lifetime. 

I notice that during times of impending danger, our TV broadcasts include sign language with our English speaking presenters. 

I have yet to notice our so-called essential foreign languages be represented in such broadcasts.

Peter Wilson

Bemboka