Trust me - would I lie to you?

I have just gone through a letter to the stallholders, written in 2005 by the Murdoch's, asking for help in securing their new lease with the council. I held it up in front of a mirror just to see if it read in reverse!
No wonder so many people feel betrayed. Just for fun, go through it with a red pen and circle the BS.

5th Dec 2005

Dear Stallholder,

FUTURE of FREMANTLE MARKETS

As many of you will be aware, we have put to the City of Fremantle a proposal whereby we fund a number of improvements to the Fremantle Market building (owned by the City of Fremantle) including:

Cooling the building (an urgent issue)
A new electricity system (an urgent issue) and
New signage on the exterior of the building.

We also have a number of other ideas to revitalise the Fremantle Markets business and to keep it West Australia’s premier tourist attraction which we would be keen to explore and implement.

It is not financially viable for us to fund the above improvements (and any other future necessary improvements) under the current head lease which has less than 5 years to run. Accordingly we have asked the City of Fremantle to enter into a new long term lease with us we believe will benefit the Fremantle Markets as a whole and Fremantle in general.

We consider the Fremantle Market business important to us, to stallholders and to Fremantle. Like many of you, we have spent 30 years working to make the business a success and would like to continue.

We believe our business model in trying to keep the Fremantle Markets a relatively low cost environment for small operators like you is the key to long term viability of the business. Integral to this business model is long term tenure (for all of us)

In short, the positives for the business plan being adopted by the City of Fremantle are:

Capital improvements being carried out as soon as possible;
Continuation under same operators who have an understanding of what makes the business a success and what is needed to continue its viability long term;
New management (John and Jamie Murdoch) but in the same family;
Certainty and continuity of stallholders;
Possibility of longer tenure (written into licence agreement) for stallholders if Murdoch company has longer tenure.

Negatives to be considered should the City of Fremantle not approve this Business Plan include:

No improvements will be made to the building in relation to cooling and new electricity supply.
License fees will be higher. Current operators (Murdoch Company) will be forced to view the business as a 5 year cash flow and must assume that at the end of the lease that another operator may be appointed by the City of Fremantle. We cannot guarantee that the market will not change completely with a new operator clearing out all stalls and only replacing them with stallholders willing to pay the highest price.
Your current goodwill you have built up over a number of years or goodwill you have purchased from a previous stall owner will diminish in value as each month goes by and, at the end of 5 years, could be worth nil given the uncertainty of what the markets will be and who will operate them and how they will operate them.
Your ability to sell your stall in the next 5 years will also diminish (along with its value) as who would buy a stall which could for all intents and purposes disappear in less than 5 years give Murdoch company cannot guarantee the Market will be here or who will run it and how in 5 years time.

If you believe the Business Plan should be adopted by the City of Fremantle, we strongly urge you as individuals or as a group to let the City of Fremantle know as soon as possible your support by writing or emailing (and marked as “Fremantle Markets Business Plan Submission”) and addressed to: …

We urge you to consider this letter carefully as the future of the Fremantle Markets as we know it today could be a thing of the past.

(Signed John and Jamie Murdoch)

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