I am usually the only member of public present, but this time I was joined by another member of the public, who sat at the back of the room and did not raise any questions.
There were two absentees from the meeting, Meg Mortimer (due to illness) and Jonathan Fitzgerald-Bond.
The meeting, as usual, started with public questions. I raised the question of dog poo in the central area, on behalf of my neighbouring residents. I emphasised that despite requests to the community police to contact the dog warden, no one had yet arrived. The Council sympathised. The question was asked if there enough warning notices and dog poo disposal bins. The answer was no. Hopefully there will be some follow up before the next meeting or I will raise the question again.
Robbie Mew reported that the grants committee had given the match funding to the youth theatre trip to London.
Letter from Robin McInnes reporting that the outputs from the conference (landslides and climate change) will be published on his team’s web site in mid July. I was not able to find out the URL for his site.
Note: this wasn’t on the agenda – Next there was a discussion about VentnorBlog and their offer to audio record all Town Council meetings and broadcast through the Blog. It was raised by Brian Lucas in the context of TC communications (Quality Council status). I felt general thinking was in favour of the recordings.
Val Taylor stated that all the names and contact details of the town councillors should be published and repeat published periodically (Chronicle was suggested for this, but Brenda Lawson reminded the meeting that the Chronicle only had a circulation of 1000, the County Press had even wider and the Blog wider still again).
A revised code of conduct for local authorities has been released: (Local Authorities (model code of conduct) order 2007.
Training for all members available on 4th, 12th and 17th July (One day courses) This is relevant as the whole point of this new code is to make the town council more “public inclusive”. It was reported that there were many councillors on the Island who had no training at all in this.
I’ll follow this and report how it progresses by asking at the next TC meeting how many councillors were trained in these dates and how many are not trained.
The Sunday concerts at Ventnor Bandstand are going very well, but costing about £100 a time to run against revenue of about £20. Overall performer engagement fees are about £1200. Therefore the Ventnor Enhancement Fund which is responsible for the programme is running at a significant loss. Maureen Cawley asked the TC Grants Committee to consider a grant of about £500 to help defray the costs of running this popular town attraction. The TC agreed to the proposal.
Brenda L raised a major concern about this, not so much that the enhancement fund was losing money, more that the County Council had not provided any financial support to the Town Council, for providing a public service. This needs to be understood against the background of the local authority delegating service delivery to local town councils, but not supporting this empowerment with adequate financial protection. Val T felt that the IOW Council were morally wrong in their handling of this situation.
It might seem a small issue in this case, but it implies potential problems with large scale outsourcing.
For example, the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group put forward a request for funding to allow them to provide advice and support to farming groups primarily relating to environmental management to improve the countryside. The request was turned down as this was seen as a “me to” organisation that did not bring any new added value. It was however referred to the grants committee.
Continuing on, a discussion was held on the Older Persons Champion initiative being developed by the IOW Council (more to follow on this as the detail develops). It was briefly covered by Brenda L. and basically enables older people to have a representative voice at TC level (there was merriment in the room as everyone realised they were technically older people).
A point was raised for the next TC meeting that there is a very high chance of a mobile CCTV unit being provided to Ventnor on the basis of a long term loan. Mobility was seen as being more useful than fixed base.
On the 25th June Planning Meeting (next Monday), it was reported that the plans for the new super toilets on the Eastern Esplanade would be reviewed.
Mark Compton Hall
