Originally Posted by
extralite
Wrote about this back in the day. This airfield with infrastructure, at least covering 100 hectares and a lot of it prime development land in a booming north coast tourist town, was sold quietly by Richmond Valley Council for less than the cost of many houses in the town. Just under $3m. (You can find the sale price buried in the council minutes of the time about 4 years ago. Like barely a few paragraphs.)
There was no recent public tender for this public asset. No advertising that it was for sale. It was sold to a party of just a few guys (maybe just 2) that it quietly negotiated with. There was a heritage listing in the original agreements, but somehow the details of that are now a bit murky and appear to be very watered down. The gates went up on the airport shortly after it was sold and most of the tenants booted from their hangars. These were only low impact flyers...a few gyros, a few RA aircraft etc.
I am no lawyer, but the fact that this didn't go to tender, wasn't advertised, and sold for what is blatantly millions below market value seemed a breach of process to me. Sale of public assets are supposed to go to tender and this is the process that is supposed to be followed: .
https://www.olg.nsw.gov.au/wp-conten...nment-2009.pdf
So i wrote to NSW ICAC and also the Council for Local Government. Well you can guess the response. They would rather sit on their asss's and collect a salary then do their actual job. Why bother? Unless it is in the media and there is political pressure, why would you look at it? ICAC won't look at anything unless you can prove corruption which for the average person would be impossible...and also isn't that their job? If nothing else, it is very "odd".
Ultimately a very small group of people got their hands on a lot of development land for peanuts and are now are very wealthy because of it. They don't want the airfield used,. And the public? They lost a public asset and they got very little money for the community in return.
It's absolutely shameful that the community allowed this to happen, and that Council wasn't investigated over this. Can you post the response you received? Would be good to have it here for posterity when things inevitably play out as you say.
It'd be one thing if the airfield's presence was a nuisance, and perhaps it is as far as developers and some NIMBYs are concerned. But from visiting in/around the township more than a few times I always felt that Evans Head was part of the town's identity and that folks were proud of the heritage there. Maybe that's just some cognitive bias on my part?