Gympie Basketball Association and council have negotiated a compromise over court hire fees

The Gympie Basketball Association has applauded the efforts of councillor Bruce Devereaux in negotiating an agreement after the council moved to double court hire fees.

Brandon Albrecht is a standout of Gympie basketball and Gympie sport. The Gympie Basketball Association has applauded the efforts of councillor Bruce Devereaux in negotiating an agreement after the council moved to double court hire fees. Photo: Bec Singh

Letter to the Editor

Earlier this month the (Gympie Regional) council announced that they were going to double court hire costs at the Pavilion for indoor sports.

Thanks to our hard working committee and vocal members we have come to an agreement on court hire that is affordable.

Working closely with councillor Bruce Devereaux, we have been given a flat rate for hire of the Pavilion. This equates to a rise of approximately 8% which is within our budgets. We thank Bruce for working with us on this issue.

We are now working with council on the issue of lack of playing space for Gympie Basketball.

Gympie Basketball has been lobbying council for a new stadium for over four years to no avail.

This season our high school competition has been relocated for nine out of 18 weeks due to the Pavilion not being available for our regular fixtures.

This never happened years ago and as I understand it, Gympie Basketball raised over $1.5 million to build the $3 million Pavilion, including surrendering the land at Wises Road to council, and was nominated the primary tenant by the council at the time.

We have presented to council a two court stadium, budgeted at $1.5 million to build, not the unrealistic $13.5 million building that the recent feasibility study proposed.

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Lack of playing space has been limiting the growth of our sport for over four years. This stadium is well overdue for the Gympie region.

Gympie Amateur Basketball Association president Justin Brown, vice-president Adam Turner, secretary Sonia Mackenzie, treasurer/registrar Jo Hose

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