A new sports complex is easy to open and hard to sustain. The ribbon-cutting draws a crowd; the running costs arrive quietly every month thereafter. At end-March 2026 Masunga, in the north-east, faced exactly that test as its sports complex opened for public use — and councillors moved almost immediately to the question of how to keep it affordable and lit.

Two proposals framed the council’s thinking. The first was solar lighting, a recognition that an open-grid facility in a small centre carries an electricity bill that can quietly undermine its public mission. The second was a review of booking fees, the lever that determines whether the complex stays within reach of the community it was built for or drifts towards the few who can pay premium rates.

Taken together, the two ideas read as a single instinct: build for use, not for show. A solar retrofit lowers the operating cost that decides whether a facility opens its doors daily or only for paying events. A calibrated fee schedule decides who walks through them. The two levers pull in the same direction, and a council that reaches for both early is treating the complex as a long-term obligation rather than a finished project.

That the conversation turned to upkeep within days of opening is the encouraging part. The failure mode for small-town facilities is the opposite: a celebrated launch followed by a slow slide into disuse as bills mount and bookings thin. For a town the size of Masunga, those two decisions matter more to the complex’s long-term life than the opening ceremony ever will.

The measure of a public facility is not the day it opens but the years it stays open and affordable.