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The Bradworthy Wind Turbines
Councillor
Christie's Weblog
From your Torridge District Councillor Peter Christie
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18th February '07
Well the budget setting meeting of Torridge has come and gone – and, as expected, it was a very rancorous occasion with insults flying and some unexpected outcomes. For example, I was assured that the latest wave of sacked council officers would add only around £80,000 to the £1 million already spent. Cllr.Len Ford announced that he was ‘ashamed’ to be a member of Torridge owing to the mismanagement of its finances whilst Cllr.William Isaac, a member of the administration, actually voted against his own group over the cutting of particular staff. Cllr.Des Shadrick from Holsworthy tried to cut even more funding from Bideford’s Burton Art Gallery and Museum - but got very few backers. Cllr.Hugo Barton denounced the ‘complete political ineptitude of this council’s leaders’ whilst Cllr.Alan Bewes, rather out of step with the meeting, actually suggested increasing councillor’s allowances – not I suspect the message the public will want to hear when services are being cut! I should add that most of the above speakers are Lib-Dems whilst Torridge is run by a coalition of Conservatives and Independents – so there’s no love lost there! The vote when it came was 18 in favour, 6 against (including me) and 5 abstentions – not a resounding success for the leader Pat Ferguson and her deputy Steve Clarke.
Personally I was intrigued by just how much emphasis was put on the views of the unelected ‘Citizens Panel’. Some time ago Torridge tried to get 1000 people to join this group in the hope they could give the council a ‘steer’ on what council taxpayers were thinking. So far only 255 people have been enrolled yet great weight seems to be given to their views – which included placing Bideford port at the bottom of their service priorities. Considering that a minority of the panel live in Bideford this isn’t perhaps surprising. Certainly if I wasn’t a councillor and thus didn’t know the whole facts I would think twice about supporting, for example, Holsworthy Market. The panel is, of course, self selected and I can’t help but wonder how many of them are actually aware of the true state of things at Torridge and aren’t just voicing their own particular interests – I have to say that anyone who thinks the future of Bideford’s port isn’t of vital importance to the town and district doesn’t command much respect from me.
From April 1st this year the police will no longer be supplying a traffic warden service in this district. Your first reaction might well be to shout hooray but a moment’s thought will doubtless call to mind some of the moronic and dangerous parking you have probably seen in Bideford and Torrington over the years – which only the intervention of traffic wardens has been able to solve. Devon County Council is currently looking at taking over the service and centralising its administration in Exeter. In order to run it in Bideford and Torrington, however, they have approached Torridge District Council suggesting the existing car park attendants could ‘double-up’ and patrol the streets as well as the car parks. When Torridge asked about the costs/income to be expected Devon were very cagey only saying that over the last complete financial year the area’s traffic wardens issued 2144 tickets which generated some £62,000 – nowhere near enough to cover the costs of the service – which makes one wonder if Devon is contemplating meeting the shortfall by raising fine levels or perhaps more aggressive patrolling? I have raised the issue of the future of Residents’ Parking as this was only commenced in Bideford on the basis that the money raised by issuing parking permits went to pay for a dedicated warden to police the scheme. If this issue isn’t solved by April will we see chaos on the streets and clashes between residents and car drivers? Watch this space.
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