Page 50 - Phonebox Magazine May 2009

Councillor Corner
A contribution from Cllr Debbie Brock and Cllr Peter Geary
THE PROPOSED WARDING OF OLNEY
A working group of Milton Keynes Council has come up with some proposals to change the way in which members of Olney Town Council are elected. Currently, as in May 2008, residents of Olney all voted for the same list of prospective councillors.
The new proposals are to divide the town into three sections or “wards”, residents would only be able to vote for those candidates who were representing their part of Olney rather than the full council. Regular readers of the Mercury column will be aware that the town council do not wish to see warding of Olney take place and have made strong representations to the Parish Review working group in this vein.
At April’s Milton Keynes Full Council meeting Cllr David Rumens along with ourselves underlined the Town Council’s position and expressed our desire that a robust public consultation should take place. We made it very clear that all issues should be up for consultation, including if warding should happen at all, not just how the town should be divided up. A unanimous vote heralded the start of that consultation and we will endeavour to see that the town is consulted in a thorough way. If you feel strongly about this issue then please either let us know your views in writing or respond to the consultation officially when you see it advertised.
OLNEY’S TRAFFIC REVIEW
Following the consultation on improving matters relating to traffic we have consistently pursued news of a start in implementation of the prioritised recommendations. To our dismay we have recently learned that the budget for Olney’s review, amongst others, has been severely cut back on. We will keep you updated when we have more news but rest assured we will keep up the pressure to get the much needed improvements moving.
WHITE BOXES
Along Olney High Street you may have noticed that there are a number of white boxes with a white cross marked in them. These are designed to tell car users that they should not park in this area as it is required for access. Unfortunately this advisory system has been disregarded on numerous occasions and as a result Milton Keynes Council is soon to be consulting on putting double yellow lines on these short sections of road so that if vehicles do park in them they can be more robustly enforced.
SEAT BELT ENFORCEMENT
You may remember back in February that a mixture of plain clothed and uniformed police officers undertook seat belt enforcement in Olney High Street as part of a European road safety drive. At the time this caused some consternation, particularly in this publication. As part of our role we are able to ask questions of the Police Authority. We asked how many officers were involved, how much time it took and how much the whole exercise cost. The answers are
that 12 police officers were involved, and
although they were in Olney for only 2
hours with travelling time and planning
this amounted to around 75 hours of
officer time. The manpower part of the
exercise cost around £2000 but this does
not include the travelling and vehicle expense etc. They stopped 57 drivers for seatbelt offences, 8 for mobile phone offences and seized one vehicle for not being insured. We will leave it up to everyone individually to assess if this is a good use of Police time and resources or not.
POTHOLES
There are not many people who can have missed the amount of potholes that have appeared in roads across the Ward recently. Some due to the recent cold weather but some have also been around for much longer than that. Early last year the council was working to get potholes filled in quickly to both reduce wear and tear on vehicles and the eventual cost of repair as if left, especially in cold wet weather they only get bigger. During the first part of the 2008 financial year MKC were filling most potholes within 48hrs of them being reported. A problem arose when the budget ran out in late September, since then only the very worst and most dangerous holes have been filled. When the cold weather came some rural roads in particular got into a very poor state. At April’s Full Council meeting the administration came to council to ask for £155,000 from reserves to help with clearing up the backlog. We both spoke in the debate even if it did not appear that the cabinet member responsible was listening at one point (he pretended to play a violin...) we voted in favour although we expressed concerns that the request was definitely too late and may be too little to solve the problem.
We have been assured that all the potholes have been logged and are in the process of being filled with priority being given to the worst ones on the busiest routes. If you continue to notice a bad pothole that is not being filled then please let us know and we can check if it is on the work program and when it would be likely to be repaired.
CYCLING
Having asked for an investigation to be carried out into the reasons the Council did not succeed in its bid for Milton Keynes to become a “Cycling Town”, thus missing much needed cash investment into cycling, that report finally came to Cabinet at the beginning of April. The Council has over time consistently under funded cycling and the forecasts seem to confirm this trend for the foreseeable future too.
The report set out the challenges to get cycling on the right track – it included a short term plan to tie in with the unique opportunity and impetus that the 2012 Olympics will bring. The recommendations of the report however do little to see the challenges and opportunities being progressed. We will continue to push for more money for cycling and for a cycle path to connect Lavendon and Warrington to Olney.
If you feel we can help you in any way please feel free to contact us or call into our Surgery at The Olney Centre from 7.30pm until 8.30pm on Friday 1st May and Friday 5th June.
CONTACT INFORMATION Cllr Debbie Brock and Cllr Peter Geary,
c/o Civic Offices, 1 Saxon Gate East, CMK MK9 3HG
TEL 01234714260
EMAIL debbie.brock@milton-keynes.gov.uk peter.geary@milton-keynes.gov.uk
50 Phonebox Magazine