Locals react to council decision not to move back into Ray Walsh House

The Northern Daily Leader

Tamworth locals aren't too happy about their local government's recent decision to abandon Ray Walsh House, the city's seat of power since the 1990s. Video by Gareth Gardner and Jonathan Hawes

Transcript

00:00We, as a council, cannot remediate that building and do it affordably and turn it back into

00:10offices.

00:11It would make sense to sell it if every option was looked at, but every option is not looked

00:15at.

00:16So we really want to see a much more thorough investigation of the options and the ability

00:22to possibly save this building and save the history that goes with it.

00:30Look I recognise that for council it's important that they have a safe and functional building

00:34so I probably don't have a strong perspective about where they're located and in the building

00:38that they were in, you know, it's taxpayers money, it's probably expensive to fix, so

00:42I think they have to make some fairly practical and reasonable decisions for the best for

00:46their workers and their site.

00:49It's sort of hard to understand how they can justify spending a lot of money on a new building

00:54when you've got a perfectly good one there.

00:56They're probably saying there's some issues with it, but for me it's structurally sound,

01:00it's huge, it's a monstrosity, like there's plenty of room in there.

01:05I for one would love for us to be able to go back into that building and re-accommodate

01:08all of our staff and go back into that situation, but I'm a realist, it's just not affordable.

01:14We can't afford to do that.

01:16I don't know if it gets demolished, I'd like to know who would be paying for the demolition,

01:21the developer or the poor old rate payers who are in for another shock.

01:27I think it would be a good thing to actually remediate this building and bring it back

01:33into operation.

01:35It's a building that's well liked, visitors even say what a lovely building it is, and

01:42it is indeed.

01:43I've been at the top floor and it seems to be a beautiful building in many ways.

01:49In the post-COVID world, council staff could just use Zoom or other audio-visual link technologies

01:56to get those efficiencies without needing a centralised office space?

02:00You can do that, I don't know about you, but I get sick of that bloody Zoom.

02:06You can't beat face to face, you can read body language, you can get stuff done.

02:11Zoom is a very good tool, but I don't think it's something we should be just using all the time.

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