Ballina airport management now have a tender out for ATCs to provide a Unicom as a paid service.
They are actually tendering for someone/anyone (generally only ATC or recently ex-ATC qualify for the licence provisions now) to provide a CAGRS, which is a whole different kettle of fish to a Unicom. And I'll bet that the tender cost will be recovered by user pays.
Why doesn't one of the local operators at Ballina provide a Unicom now? There is nothing stopping them. Wait...maybe because they see no value in it perhaps? So the alternative is basically forcing the AD operator to provide some sort of service, so of course they are going to recover their costs. After all, having any sort of ground to air service comms is not going to cause an increase in traffic into Ballina, so where is the cost benefit to the council? They will simply be providing additional services to people who would already be going there, even if that service wasn't there.