One of the great things about Australia and Manly area is generally very good for sporting facilities. However due to the increasing cost of land, sporting facilities, especially those not owned by the council are under threat, as there is greater profit from land development. For example in the 4 or 5 years I have been here in tennis courts have been developed which where at North Curl Curl and last year Court Sports (Deewhy), which had 12 tennis courts, 8 squash courts and volley ball courts looked as if it may well be developed. (these are in Warringah, but still used by locals who live in Manly too). It's fair to say that often the reality is these sports are not financially viable to be run by the private companies. Therefore there is a role that council needs to play in preserving these facilities (as these keep the population healthy and often keep a bit of green space and frankly once there gone there gone).

The role council can play is I think two fold;
1) Often these sporting facilities are heavily used during the evenings and less so during the day. Therefore combining sporting facilities with schools would be a logical way to go. This way the schools would get for example tennis courts to use during the day and the public can get to use them outside of school hours. Logical, but rarely is this the case.

2) The second model which is interesting is to have these sporting facilities run by part paid and part volunteer staff. A good example of this is the Allambie Heights tennis courts (where I play). There are 4 superb tennis courts with a paid for groundsmen, otherwise everything is run bu a committee of volunteers. The land is owned by Warringah and other than that the tennis club gets some subsidy, but is otherwise is self funded. This way the courts are very reasonably priced.