In the March 23 edition of the Queenstown Times, local councillor Cath Gilmour made her case for the full-time return of the Water Discovery and Wakatipu swimming schools to Alpine Aqualand, saying Lakes Leisure now had a "near monopoly" on the community-owned pool.
Today, we publish a response to that "Queenstown Forum" column, addressed to all local councillors, from Queenstown couple Turi and John Edmonds.
Dear Councillors, As a family, we can't tell you how excited we were that the Alpine Aqualand facility was opening.
My daughters tracked the progress of our new pool each time we drove past.
When it first opened, all five of us went there regularly together.
The flipside is that now we are disappointed that our three children don't have lessons in this very same pool.
Our chosen swim teacher, Jane Hughes from the Wakatipu Swim School, has had her access revoked and, quite frankly, we haven't been there since we have had to relocate to the Queenstown Primary School shed, which is very inconvenient, small and limited in many ways.
Given that we are ratepayers, this irritates us.
Our rates notice shows that we are charged $59 per year for Aqualand Aquatic Centre use.
Basically, this means that we have a mandatory obligation to subsidise this facility and we've been told we can't use it for the purpose which was promised: to have a choice of swimming lesson products.
Lakes Leisure's anti-competitive position surprises us considering the example of the town's pier.
The pier is a council owned asset as is Alpine Aqualand, but council actually encourages competition in this case.
Kawarau Jet, Parasailing and Underwater World all happily co-exist on this pier.
The parallel to be considered here is that if the council decided to set up its own water-based transport on this pier, would it shove all the other operators off and tell them to find another wharf?Lakes Leisure's role is to manage the asset, not to operate at the same level as community businesses and become competitive with them.
We are concerned that this is precedent-setting.
We appeal to your sense of fairness and request that you reinstate Wakatipu Swim School as an option for lessons at Alpine Aqualand.
-Turi & John Edmonds, Queenstown
