The first meeting of the newly elected Ventnor Town Council took place last night and attracted around 15 members of the public.
Although the meeting ran through the formalities of electing heads of committees, setting mayor’s allowance etc, there were quite a few interesting items raised.
We’ll be covering those later in the week, but in the meantime for all those desperate to find out who has been elected Mayor etc, here are the details.
Mayor of Ventnor
Cllr Chris Welsford, who joined the TC back in November last year has been voted in as Mayor of Ventnor for the next year.
He was proposed by Cllr Brian Lucas and seconded by Cllr Joan Garlick with no objections or other nominations.
Cllr Welsford also won his seat on County Council at the recent elections replacing Jonathan Fitzgerald (Bond) in Ventnor East.
Upon receiving the Mayoral Chain from former Mayoress Cllr Scoccia, Cllr Welsford stated that Cllr Scoccia would be a hard act to follow given the amount she has achieved for the town and thanked everyone for their votes.
Cllr Welsford has shown total dedication to everything he gets involved with and in our opinion, will certainly do the town proud.
Deputy Mayor
For the role of Deputy Mayor, Cllr Debby Robinson was nominated by Cllr David George and seconded by Cllr Joan Garlick.
There were no other nominations or objections and Cllr Robinson took great pride in receiving her Deputy Mayoral Badge of Office.
Cllr Robinson is passionate about Ventnor and we’re sure she’ll do a fabulous job of representing the town in her Deputy Mayoral role
Plans Committee
Cllr Brian Lucas was elected as Chair of the committee, proposed Cllr Scoccia and seconded by Cllr Robinson.
We don’t necessarily agree with all his previous decisions, but on most occasions we’ve been very impressed with Cllr Lucas’ input and consideration on planning issues. He appears to do his own research on forthcoming applications prior to the meetings and pays particular attention to detail, so we consider him a very good choice to chair this committee.
Grants Committee
Cllr Debby Robinson was elected as Chair of the Committee, proposed by Cllr Scocia and seconded by Cllr Garlick.
Winter Gardens Management Committee
Finally, Cllr David George was elected as Chair of the Winter Gardens Management Committee. He was proposed by Cllr Robinson and seconded by Cllr Stubbings with no other nominations or objections.
Cllr George took the opportunity make a statement upon his election of the position which we’ll be covering later in the week, but in the meantime he requested that the TC wrote a letter of thanks to former Cllr Maureen Cawley who has been integral to developments at the Winter Gardens over the past few years.
As we said at the beginning a number of interesting topics came out of the meeting which we’ll be covering later in the week.
Watch this space.
