Listening to residents

FINESTRAT mayor, Juan Francisco Pérez met with foreign residents of the old town yesterday for a breakfast meeting.

The aim was to inform them of the town halls plans for this coming year and also to discuss and listen to their concerns.

The ‘RON Meeting” – Residents of Other Nationalities, takes place twice yearly and was also attended by Victoria Curtis, the Councillor for Foreign Residents.

Around 50 foreign residents attended the morning meeting – a second was held later that afternoon in La Cala and the mayor opened the session by expressing his sympathies and solidarity with London following the attack in the capital the previous day.

This coming year the town hall will be rolling out free wi-fi hotspots in two specific areas that are popular tourist attractions – at the Font del Moli picnic area and along La Cala Finestrat beach.

To attract more tourism to the town they are also consulting on granting permission to open a bike centre at Font del Moli, which will include a small hotel to encourage more sports tourism, to be completed for next year.

Drainage is another big and important project that they have invested a significant amount of money into, channeling storm waters from the mountains down into the sea.

Following the torrential rain last month many roads were damaged and they are in the process of carrying out repairs.

There then followed a wide ranging spectrum of questions from the floor which covered the bus service – or lack of - rubbish collection, parking, roads, postal delivery and issue of feral cats.

On this subject the mayor announced that last year the council invested €2,000 on a sterilisation campaign, which resulted in 57 cats being neutered.