Rather than admit to their mistake, they have been trying to transfer the cost of their mistake on to local swimming and water polo clubs.

When the councils tendered for the pool management it appears that the officers responsible did not understand the fees charged to the pool user groups despite operating the pools for a number of years.

 The schedule of fees provided with the tender package included a lane hire fee, which is normally charged to businesses wanting to use council facilities.

In the Albury Council information session the management of Aligned Leisure admitted that they “assumed” the lane hire fees were charged to all user groups (that is, all business and volunteer user groups).

Further, they put the lane hire fee in their cost model and never tested this assumption.

It has become clear that the council officers responsible did not pick this up and this resulted in Aligned Leisure being awarded the management contract.

Since awarding the contract, the councils have maintained the application of these fees has been “Inconsistent”.

The truth is that the application of these fees has been very consistent.

The previous pool operators did not apply them to volunteer swimming and water polo clubs.

The inconsistency is that the council officers responsible did not understand the cost model for the pools they were responsible for.

It would seem this mistake was covered up by attempting to charge swimming and water polo clubs lane hire fees.

Based on the level of fees suggested, we estimate that they are trying to collect an additional $100,000.00 a year or $500,000.00 over the period of the contract.

If the Aligned Leisure assumption had been flagged by council or tested by Aligned Leisure by contacting a swimming or water polo club then the results of the tender would have been very different.

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We understand the YMCA, as an incumbent manager, did understand the fee structure and their tender did not include lane hire fees to volunteer clubs.

If Aligned Leisure had tested their assumption and removed the fee from their model their tender amount would have been at least $500,000 more than that of the YMCA and we would have a different pool operator.

The presidents of the swimming and water polo districts then had three meetings with the operator and the council officers responsible.

We explained that swimming and water polo clubs could not afford these charges.

We then had the publicity machine of the councils swing into action with the mayors publicly saying that swimming had it too easy for too long and needed to pay up.

I have been on the board of the Ovens and Murray District Swimming Association for over 11 years and we have never been approached by council about contributing more to the operation of these pools.

There have been various comparisons with other sports written by the councils, but they all miss the point. Swimming is a life skill, it is the one sport that can save your life.

By having affordable prices to enter the council pools you are keeping kids out of the rivers and provide the skills these kids need if they accidentally fall in our unfenced rivers and creeks.