COUNCIL LAND LEASE - NEWSPAPER ARTICLES 1981

In 1981 a series of newspaper articles appeared in the Canning-Melville Times and possibly other newspapers describing the Melville City Council's deliberations regarding the "rateability" of land used by sporting and other clubs, and in particular the land on which the Melville Glades Golf Club is established upon.

The discussions centred around whether the existing arrangements of clubs paying zero or nominal rents for the land on which they operate should be calculated on the standards applied to other properties in the City. If implemented, this would have meant a large increase in the cost of the lease to MGGC.

MGGC was central to the content of most articles and the subject has ongoing implications for the club's subsequent and future lease arrangements. The exact sequence of articles is not evident as the dates are not present on any except for one dated the 4th November 1981. All are likely to have been in close succession to this date.

It appears that the Council’s discussions ended with the article titled "Let sleeping dogs lie" implying that the existing system of charges would continue. The six articles attached to this Item as both a picture (jpg) and Portable Document Format (pdf) format are titled:

a) “$100,000 rates not collected” (three pieces of newspaper cuttings) (This attachment also has been converted to Word format (docx) using Optical Character Recognition technology.)

b) “Lost revenue claim over non-rated club”

c) “$100,000 rates shock for club”

d) “City council’s golf club rates issue widens”

e) “Investigation into rating sports clubs”

f) “Let sleeping dogs lie”

___