Round three of tennis stoush back to deuce

Deciding who runs the City’s tennis courts has become perhaps the most difficult political and legal problem Council faces.

Monday night saw the third council meeting dominated by the issue, the public gallery again packed with supporters of Rory Miles who has run the Rushcutters Bay courts for 26 years.

The meeting, which like the others saw Councillors leaving the room to consider confidential late-breaking legal advice, decided to scrap the previous tender process which had awarded control of all the City’s courts to Jensen’s, the company which currently runs the Prince Alfred courts near Central. The tender had been structured to favour a single operator for all the City’s courts, including several two-court sites which are not commercially viable.

After the adjournment, Cr Marcelle Hoff from the Clover Moore Party emerged with significant amendments to the existing item, giving Councillors more say in the assessment criteria which would guide the next decision.

This time, a probity advisor will be appointed to oversee the tender process. This advisor will be available to Councillors to receive their input on the new assessment criteria, and the criteria will then be considered by Council for endorsement.

Councillors all voted “Aye” and the public gallery exited, many disappointed because they had been expecting a move to open the meeting so they could speak to Councillors.

One supporter, former Deputy Lord Mayor Dixie Coulton, said the outcome had been engineered to minimise criticism from the placard-wielding crowd in front of the press contingent.

The previous tender had been frozen amid claims that the process had been compromised because of contact between various tenderers and councillors during the process. One tenderer, Papa A Pty Ltd, had been excluded on these grounds and yet the winning tenderer had also invited Councillors to various functions, and supporters of Rory Miles had sent 160 emails to Councillors.

Cr Chris Harris (Greens) had produced a legal opinion from QC Francis Douglas that the exclusion of one tenderer but not the other on the same grounds was “a breach of tendering guidelines”.

A probity review tabled at Council examined the communication and concluded that that “confidentiality has been breached given the naming of a preferred tenderer in several media articles, comments made in the emails referred to above and comments made by councillors during Council meetings”.

by Michael Gormly