Council Meeting - Hay Festival, Christmas Lights, Powys County Council, Walking Festival, Bonfire Night

Hay Festival have offered the Town Council a slot for a Question and Answer session. This will be on Thursday 24th May, in the afternoon after the schoolchildren have gone home. The councillors want the session to be based around the Town Plan. There was some discussion about whether the Town Council should have "official answers" for questions they thought might be asked, or whether they should show a range of views coming to a consensus. One councillor said that it would be good for the public to see how a consensus was reached.

Now the Christmas lights are back in storage, in the "bear pit" cellar underneath La Maison, the councillors want to have an audit of what's broken, what's left, and they also want to re-use the old frames that had incandescent bulbs, by replacing the bulbs with LED lights. Some councillors favoured more coloured lights, others considered that everything white looked more striking. Councillors will be meeting the Chamber of Commerce to consider what the Christmas lights will look like at the end of this year.

And the Transfer of Assets is still stalled over the problem of the money from the Car Park, which Powys County Council promised to Hay, and then changed their minds. The Town councillors are a little worried about the new Healthmatic contract for the public toilets - car park money was supposed to be available for that.
There's also been no reply from the PCC yet about the library building, in which the Town Council expressed an interest some time ago. However, there will be a meeting soon between Hay School and the Library Services to negotiate when the library at the school will have its opening hours.
As the school building's "community room" is not a like-for-like replacement for the old community centre, HADSCL are trying to move forward with plans for a new community centre. They also want to ensure that the money in the old Shire reserves (£200,000) doesn't disappear before it's used for the benefit of Hay.

Anna from Drover Holidays is keen to re-start the Walking Festival and has asked for Town Council support. As the Town Council are very much involved with the Miles without Stiles project, they would like to see this take off again.

Jim is a member of the Lions, and brought up the Lions' Bonfire Night, which has been held at Clyro Court for around the last 25 years. The members of the committee which organises the event now feel they are getting too old to continue, but they would like to pass on the event to new organisers if they can. So this coming Bonfire Night will be the last one that the Lions organise.
At present, the event is covered by general Lions' insurance, so a new group would have to have public liability insurance, and enough money up front to stage the event. The Lions usually spend about £3,000 on fireworks, and charge £10 for a family entrance fee, and last year they made £800 profit. Clyro Court don't charge for the use of their land, but they do run the bar, and make money from the event that way.
The Town Council didn't feel able to take on the organisation, as they are doing so many other things already, but they did promise to communicate with other groups in the hope that someone would take it on.