A LOCAL AFL club has threatened to call it quits if Shellharbour City Council doesn't lower the fees for sporting fields, or raise the standard of service.
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The Shellharbour Suns AFL club made a submission against council's 2015/16 budget - adopted on June 23 - calling for an explanation on the fee structure for sports grounds.
Last year, the Suns paid $4879 for six months' use of their home ground Jock Brown Oval (JBO) and the 2015/16 Operational Plan listed a further increase on almost all of the service fees.
Suns club president Marcus Hollingsworth said he felt they were already being "grossly overcharged" and the increase would mean the club would be forced to reconsider its future.
"We did not get $4000 worth of services at JBO in those six months," he said. "We pay $57 per hour and $25 per person to use a category one (worst to be affected by rain) sports ground.
"Our ground has been closed on all three home games this year because of wet grounds, meaning we don't even get funds from canteen sales.
"We can only use 20 per cent of the field because of poor lighting that we pay $57 per hour for.
"Premier division AFL do not pay the fees we pay."
Mr Hollingsworth said the fee structure for the use of JBO was "the highest in Australia" and Shellharbour council was the only council charging a per person rate, currently $25 and will increase to $26.
The new fees and charges include $59 an hour for training lights, $112 season booking fee, $50 pre-season booking fee, water usage $269 per season, canteen fee $140 every six months, $26 per player per season and $133 per day for activities involving 30 or more persons.
A council spokesperson said the costs of providing a service were considered "before setting fees and charges prices each year".
Suns operations manager Clark Holloway said the $59 lighting fee - for two poles and six lights - was more than a quarter of what it cost to run 840 lights at the MCG ($200 per hour).
Furthermore, Mr Holloway said the club frequently had to hire extra floodlights at its own expense, clean off "embarrassing" graffiti and regularly had to mow the grounds themselves to bring them up to a playable standard.
"Six lights is not sufficient to light an AFL field," he said.
"There has been one instance this year when we couldn't train because the grass was too long.
"They give us absolutely nothing other than lawn mowing at random and charge us the earth."
A council spokesperson said it currently subsidised lighting costs by 23 per cent on average and stated in the submission response that council had "the ability to charge and recover an approved fee for any service".
They also stated that they were reviewing priority lighting projects and sportsfield maintenance, and would consider moving the Suns to Myimbarr sports fields once the project was complete.