Council Meeting - Car Parking and CRAP

Nick, the man from CRAP,* was at the Council meeting on Monday.
After a lot of hard work, the County Council have decided to trial a residents' parking scheme in Hay. If it works here, it would be rolled out over the rest of the county.
You'd think Nick would be happy about this - but it's not as simple as that.
The County Council scheme looks to be insanely complicated compared to the CRAP scheme, with built in unfairness, like allowing people with their own private parking a vote on the public parking. It's divided into zones, and if you can't find a parking spot on your own zone/street, you can't park elsewhere in town, even though you will have paid £65 for the year for your resident's permit. A year's permit for the main car park costs an additional £150, though that does cover all the other car parks in Powys as well.
The CRAP scheme treats the whole town centre as one zone, and allows all the residents a parking spot, including people who are excluded by the Council scheme.
There was a consultation in the Library last week, though it wasn't hugely well publicised.

*doesn't quite have the same ring to it as the man from UNCLE, does it?

Later in the meeting, the subject of dog fouling came up - and there's going to be a basketry workshop at the Community Gardens on 3rd August to weave bio-degradable dog poo baskets.

Though the police haven't turned up to give a report for a while, the latest crime news is that fuel was stolen from the Dial a Ride van in the Co-op car park over the Festival - the advice was to park with the fuel cap facing the CCTV cameras in future. And in Glasbury, over a weekend, 8 catalytic converters were cut off cars.

There was a discussion of the Festival this year, too. Noise from the Globe was better managed this year, and so was the traffic around the corner of Heol-y-dwr - but there were complaints about the sludge vehicle coming to empty the toilets at the Globe at silly o'clock in the morning. The Park and Ride scheme went well, though the school coaches on the schools day of the Festival were a problem, and overall there seemed to be a lack of police presence around town. Someone was also overheard complaining that they hadn't seen any signs around town advertising that we were twinned with Timbuktu. I suppose the new ones for the Timbuktu Trail are quite discreet and small.

St Mary's Church are fund raising to put in new toilets, which will enable them to put on more concerts without the expense of hiring temporary toilets to sit in the churchyard, and they also want to make a meeting room at the back of the church, under the organ. Over the years, there has been a lot of renovation at St Mary's - the main roof has been repaired, and the tower and the apse looks fantastic now. The Council decided that they could only give financial support if the toilets were accessible for the disabled.

Among the letters sent to the Council was one concerning the privatisation of the Royal Mail, for which Steve Like excused himself, as he runs the post office. It's supposed to be sold off at the end of this year. It was agreed that this would be a bad thing, but the Council is not supposed to be overtly party political. They could, however, write to our MP with their concerns about the impact the privatisation would have on a rural community.

And those are this month's highlights!