Council should spend our money wisely
WITHOUT making any comment about the individual funding applications that were recently turned down by the town council (p5, June 29) I was disappointed to hear councillors referring to supporting community projects as ‘helping others.’ This suggests they are detached from the numerous good things being progressed by other volunteers in our town.
Surely their duty as councillors is to use the public taxes they receive in the best interests of the people of Ashbourne.
It seems obvious that it is wise use of public funds to support a worthy community project to succeed at a fraction of what it would cost if fully funded from the public purse.
When talking to individual councillors they are supportive of working with others in partnership, yet reports of meetings indicate a “them and us” approach.
Interestingly, the same page carried a report of the councillors’ intentions to use our town council’s considerable reserves to buy land that is already owned by our Derbyshire Dales District and county councils.
One example quoted is to buy part of the recreational ground, but this DDDC land is already available for our use, just as it was for the Jubilee and last Sunday’s Half Marathon & Fun Run. Do they propose to bring it under town council control, i.e. as Bradley Wood, about which we have seen the recent travails about best public use?
Any such land purchase proposal must surely pass the test of being in the town council ratepayers’ best interest. Shouldn’t the town council’s decisions be based on fully considered and costed plans and what they would use the land for?
That would be not just the cost of buying the land but include what they would spend enhancing it, what resources they would use to operate it, and then in perpetuity insuring and maintaining it.
It cannot be right that we just buy land then later work out what it will cost to run, as stated by Councillor Brown, “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it”.
We should remember the track record whereby the town council took responsibility off Derbyshire Dales District Council for running the Tourist Information Centre a few years ago.
Now we are a tourist town with no Tourist Information Centre, as highlighted in a letter to ANT last week.
It beggars belief that our town council would commit to buy land without demonstrating to the people of Ashbourne why this expense is justified, and better than lobbying the existing public owners such as DDDC to invest our council rates in our community facilities.
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