Susanna Freymark
At last month’s Richmond Valley Council meeting, decisions were made about the future of the Northern Rivers Livestock Exchange including leasing it out long term instead of being operated by council and its staff.
At tonight’s meeting, Tuesday, October 17, Councillor Robert Hayes asked for an update.
General manager Vaughan Macdonald said a contractor had been appointed to manage the process of taking the NRLX to the open market on a long term lease.
Mr Macdonald said: “An offer was made to local agents to resume sales at the NRLX with them controlling the movement of cattle through the facility.
“They responded with interest to a short term solution to get sales back at the facility.
“On the back of that we prepared a draft licence agreement to reflect those arrangements and provided that back to them on October 4.”
Mr Macdonald said there had been no response to the offer.
IndyNR.com sent an email to the agents tonight to ask for their response to this draft offer. None has been received yet.
IndyNR.com does not know what is in the offer.
Since the last public meeting about the NRLX, IndyNR.com has spent time chasing the RSPCA to clarify accusations made about animal welfare at the NRLX.
The RSPCA said it would not provide any details because of privacy issues. The RSPCA refused to even confirm whether animal welfare events had occurred at the NRLX.
Listen to the livestream of the council meeting here.
Read all the stories on the NRLX since the dispute began here.
and then