RSA sticks to its guns as last minute offer surfac

Sale of its land at 20 Melia Place remains the rescue package of choice for the Hibiscus Coast Community RSA, which rejected an alternative offer at a meeting last month.

The club is in debt and hopes that the cash injection gained by selling the land will help put its future on a more secure footing.

An offer for 20 Melia Place, details of which are confidential until it goes unconditional later this month, was accepted recently by the committee after 94 percent of members voted to sell the land, back in May.

However, not long after that deal was announced by president Frank Coggan, another proposal was put to the vote at a meeting of members on August 27.

The suggestion put forward by Chris and Gerard Peters involved transferring the RSA’s entire property to a Trust, of which the RSA would be the beneficiary. The property would be used over a 10-year period to obtain investment funds, with a minimum return guaranteed to the RSA of $500,000 per annum.

Committee member Brian Clay was key in getting the proposal put before members. He says it was about having a vision for the club’s future. Mr Clay says that selling land is not necessary and capital gained from the Peters’ proposal might have made his vision of developing the site into an RSA memorial park possible.

A total of 163 people attended the meeting and 52 percent of them voted for the proposal: 66 percent was required for the idea to go ahead.

President Frank Coggan says the committee had already rejected it on legal advice.

“There is some dissent among members, but we have a strong mandate for the land sale,” Mr Coggan says. “We are confident that the sale will be great news for all our members, who don’t want to lose our club.

We believe that this agreement represents a turning point for the fortunes of our club and with all the other changes and developments we have in place, augers well for the future of our RSA.”