Nicknamed by the community, Geoff “the entrepreneur” Sheridan and “Microphone” Mike  Edgecomb; the dynamic duo recently did a deal with BHP to spend $500k to rebuild the prehistoric basketball courts in Coober Pedy, leaving ratepayers to foot the annual bill of Approx. $35000p.a. for the next 20 years.

Q: Were the ratepayers consulted on this massive impact?  A: No! Council’s logic is that no consultation was required because the maintenance cost of $35K p.a. to be borne by the ratepayers, wasn’t an impact!

Where they came up with 20 years (life of courts) is quite astonishing when you consider what might happen at the end of 20 years? Are they going to knock it down?

Is FIFO Administrator Sheridan anticipating a Ghost Town? Either way, the community will be paying for a white elephant for a very substantial time. Kids today are not interested in basketball or tennis. Not for long anyway. The courts were built at a time when there were many, many opal mining families at the school that came from a culture of school-based sports. Those courts have already been replicated elsewhere in the town, and with today’s dynamics are rarely used.

Sheridan was sent here to clean up the mess of the DCCP not to be running off to a mine 100 km down the road to get them to restructure the history of our town. Now it has come to light that the “Entrepreneur” and the “Microphone” may have done another deal with a mysterious financier to spend $7,500,000 (million) dollars converting our Drive-In, the last in South Australia into a city-style cinema. What for?

Who is going to travel to Coober Pedy to go to a picture theatre when they are failing all around the country. Our Drive-In is definitely a tourist attraction and has many travelers staying overnight in Coober Pedy especially to go to the Drive-In thus generating valuable income into our town – our way!

A trip down memory lane, and only available in Coober Pedy, and now they want to destroy that  authenticity. This is ridiculous. The Drive-In is part of Coober Pedy’s history a tourist attraction and a major draw card. So now we get to “microphone Mike” who on behalf of the DCCP together group’s 2 or 3 remaining revolving door members has submitted plans and costings for a new cafeteria, lawns, gardens, and a whole heap of crazy stuff that doesn’t belong in the outback. So our Drive-in complex is gone!

Where is the Drive-In committee on this and if they have approved the project? Why? Without any community consultation, the same could be said for the Council’s together group and Geoff Sheridan and Co. No consultation to us means secrecy. There will be no social license issued to anyone on these terms.

WHAT IS THE REAL COST TO THE COMMUNITY FOR FUTURE MAINTENANCE, AND HOW WILL THE COUNCIL FORCE EVERYONE TO PAY IT?

If the cost to the community for maintenance on a $500k project (Basketball Courts) is $35k p.a. it stands to reason that on the $7.5M (Drive-In Proposal) maintenance would equate to $525,000 p.a., or approximately $10,000 per week.

In this opinion piece, we are NOT discussing the damaged screen, under insurance.

If you look at the costings prepared by (RLB) Rider, Levett & Bucknell and what is planned to be built, it is totally unviable. And further, how does this plan fit the culture of this town? It doesn’t!!

The Drive-in project has cafeterias and staff that need to run it. Hardly a task for a small group of volunteers.

Those park-like gardens will need maintenance crews to maintain them. We saw the public outcry when the council neglected the trees at the perimeter of the drivein fence line, planted in partnership with NAIDOC many years ago!

Who will pay for the Water to feed these luxurious parklike gardens? Lawn mowing, whipper snipping, pop-up sprinkler systems, and everything else that is required to maintain unnatural lawns and gardens during our 45C summers in the desert? This will create a further burden on our community.

A full-time snake catcher would be needed to remove the snakes that are going to come in search of water at this new oasis in the desert. What dreamer came up with this drive-in master plan? It is simply not viable or practical from any angle that you look at it.

Further to this, will the community continue to be forced to finance Geoff Sheridan’s Consultant to the tune of a curious amount of between $150k – $80k pa (plus perks?) to help conjure up all these unrealistic thought bubbles.

Coober Pedy and other opal field towns rely on their historic simplicity for tourist appeal?

Also who paid for the draft of costings prepared by RLB in these times of supposed austerity measures by the DCCP? Have our rates and charges been blown out of proportion to finance this sort of hypocrisy? What a slap in the face to the ratepayers. The community is not a cash cow despite what the” entrepreneur” and the “microphone” may think, or the State Government.

Our Drive-in is a landmark, not just some project that some consultant from Adelaide believes he can improve on while he hides behind a manufactured group, and not just that without any consultation whatsoever to the community or the various legitimate groups of the town.

The Historical Society and the Business Association could have been consulted for input into this project. The community itself should be consulted about all projects. Leaving a document on the front bench of the Council office does not make for public consultation.

To us, this is a repeat of why we are in administration and it appears that these people feel they are above us and have license to do as they please. These are comments I have personally heard from community members.

The together group is on the nose of most of the town’s ratepayers. You cannot impress desert dwellers or tourists by converting their outback town into a sideshow!! Put a stop to the wilful destruction of our town and give Sheridan his marching orders post haste!

Why the together group still needs a babysitter is a question on many lips? Is there still no leadership skills among the revolving door members? Or is the group merely a convenient collection of bewildered newbies that give the appearance of a representation? Edgecomb does not admit how many local people (mainly ratepayers) have left his group OR WHY!

Angry and puzzled rate-paying friends are asking, “Are the together group being paid for being convenient, or is it only their perpetual leader raking in a salary from our very broke town?” Being the recipients of free pizza nights is probably some sort of consolation while their leader helps them to invent crap that nobody needs or asked for. All we see here is a big division condoned and promoted by Geoff Sheridan to help him avoid consultation with the RATEPAYERS!

The self-appointed dynamic duo Sheridan and Edgecomb have no idea about our town, its history, its culture and the way we need our town to be to bring in the tourist dollars and create employment at the same time. Sheridan’s new project will be about as much of a tourist attraction as the two electricity wind turbines that bureaucrats from the now disbanded Department of State Development proudly promoted to the community as a new tourist attraction for Coober Pedy. Tourists pass a thousand wind turbines before reaching Coober Pedy and the same with picture theatres.

WE WANT TO KEEP OUR DRIVE-IN COMPLEX INTACT and have it repaired as was promised by the now, nearly defunct Drive-in Committee and the HAPLESS DCCP which was all supposed to be done under insurance anyway.

We think it’s about time the “entrepreneur” did what he was sent here for which is to clean up the financial mess of the DCCP and nothing else, and “microphone Mike” can head off back to Adelaide where he can build all the picture theatres he wants. Bureaucrats sent in to help, need to stop getting carried away with “power”, and their own thought bubbles!!

Mining companies should stick to pleasing their shareholders. This is the last of the Drive-Ins and a big draw card for Coober Pedy and we did that by ourselves! Stop the destruction and move on with your lives boyz and girlz.

Local family(s) (Names supplied)

Concerned stakeholders (updated)

Reprinted from Coober Pedy Regional Times (Originally titled: OPINION: STOP THE DESTRUCTION at COOBER PEDY LEAVE OUR DRIVE-IN ALONE- The State Government MUST remove Geoff Sheridan! )  Friday 13 September 2024