Bradley Stoke Town Councillors look set to wave through more than a dozen ‘strategic’ recommendations at a Full Council meeting on Wednesday night (18th September).
The recommendations, agreed at a ‘strategic planning meeting’ held in private on 9th September and attended by nine of the fifteen elected councillors, range from spending £11k p.a. on highway verge grass cutting services currently carried out by South Gloucestershire Council (but soon to be axed under that body’s £43m cost saving programme) to providing councillors with the option of having “complicated” business cards that cannot be produced in-house.
The agenda for this week’s meeting lists thirteen bullet point topics that are due to be considered, but full details have not been placed on the council’s website and can only be inspected in person at the council’s Jubilee Centre office. The recommendations include:
- Increasing the hours of the town council’s Youth Participation Worker from 24.8 to 29 hours per week for the period January 2013 to March 2016 and plugging a shortfall in funding of £10k p.a. due to the withdrawal of support from South Gloucestershire Council (SGC).
- Abandoning widely publicised plans to install additional equipment at the Baileys Court play area due to a lack of response from two young people previously engaged with the project and a general lack of funding options available to the town council.
- Reducing the number of dog bins in the town from 57 to 33 (justified by the fact that dog waste may now be placed in general litter bins).
- Increasing the working hours of the council’s Mobile Cleansing Operative (street cleaner) from 24 to 37 per week, at a cost of £6,400 p.a., enabling the operative to take on additional duties such as clearing overgrown walkways and emptying litter bins that the town council currently pays SGC to empty.
- Spending up to £6,000 to replace flooring in the Oak Hall at the Jubilee Centre.
- Allowing the launching of hot air balloons from the Jubilee Centre, with an annual licence being issued to each operator. Commercial operators would be charged but others would be granted a free licence.
Wednesday’s Full Council takes place at the Jubilee Centre, starting at 7.30pm. Members of the public may make statements or ask questions at the start of the meeting.
dog pooh in public general waste bins? YUK!! Not hygienic in the slightest and will make bins smell even worse than they do already. Not to mention increase in flies etc as most public bins do not have proper, closeable lids like the dog bins do.
what are they thinking???
So, can we have 24 additional general litter bins in new locations where there are currently no bins of any kind and where littering and dog fouling are prevalent? (Shelly – you don’t seem to have noticed the labels on general litter bins making it clear they can be used for dog poo – for at least the last year or more!).
It’d be a real shame if the Baileys Court play equipment was cancelled given that it’s already been promoted. It was great the young people helped kick this off but surely it doesn’t require their ongoing involvement to deliver it?
All we have to do is double wrap it (which I already do) and should be OK. How come its now allowed to go in general rubbish bins??? Does the contents just go to landfill no matter what?
Check out this article posted by Keep Britain Tidy about their recent campaign ‘bag that poo…any rubbish bin will do’. Woe betide anyone I see not cleaning up after their dog or hanging their bags on trees like a Christmas decoration!
Family Man’s intended link might be:
http://www2.keepbritaintidy.org/News/Default.aspx?newsID=959
At last some strategic thinking! Previous councils used to have them each year so there was a plan to their spending and commitments.
Agree with all their suggestions except for the Bailey’s Court play area one. Young people get involved because they want to see something happen. The fact that councils’ (all councils) take so long to “Do” anything has always been the problem. Please don’t let the young people’s failure to maintain their interest mean that their work was in vain.
So which topic was so secret on the agenda made available online that:
“full details have not been placed on the council’s website and can only be inspected in person at the council’s Jubilee Centre office”
Openness, honesty, transparency. Some of these councillors have forgotten they work for us!