Meter Maids still valuable asset but lacking support

IN reply to Geoff Reeve’s letter in the Bulletin on Wednesday.

Geoff, an entity for public enhancement as you call them, still need to be paid. Why would these girls work for nothing?. We are very much the only welcoming arm the tourists and locals have when arriving in Surfers Paradise, whether we feed parking meters or just have that quintessential photo taken.

Just because it is a private business does not make it any different than if the council were employing them, as we would still have to be paid, and that is what our donation for a photo does. Ideally, in a perfect world, we would love to be able to just give a free photo away to the tourists and maybe if we had the support of our local council and tourism bodies this would be possible.

So you are aware Geoff, council have never owned the Meter Maids, never paid for the Meter Maids, only ever profited off the millions of dollars of free publicity we have given the Goldie over the last 50-odd years. This is publicity which goes all around the world council could not afford to buy.

Having worked tirelessly over the last 30 years promoting what is left of a beautiful tourist town to the rest of the world with absolutely no recognition whatsoever from the council, Mayor Tom Tate has not even granted me a meeting with him in his whole time in office. The council’s beef with me is that it does not want the girls to take money on the streets of Surfers for a photo and we should apply for a permit …. but in the same breathe it tells me that I won’t be granted a permit.

To the question you raise on whether or not we feed parking meters – we have been feeding parking meters since 1965. However, in this changing environment we have been made a little redundant in this regard with the new electronic parking meters.

However, we do the best we can with it, putting 40 cents into parking meters where people have not put in enough for that required one or two-hour limit.

This money comes out of the donations we receive for our photographic opportunity with the public.

With a bit of support from the council and tourism bodies, this iconic brand of 50-odd years could become bigger and better in a positive light rather than trying to kill it off by belittling it continually in front of our tourists.

This is the only place in the world to have this icon. We are internationally renowned for this so it should be considered a very valuable marketing tool to the Gold Coast.