Council Watcher
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As Wrexham.com have reported the Council have still not published the ‘revised’ budget which must be showing the revised projected loss. Why are they so reluctant?
The fundamental issue with the budget for refuse collection and recycling is the last Council (before the election) signed a PFI (Private Finance Investment) contract that assumed that there would be an income from the contract. This was to be generated from the sale of recycled refuse. Unfortaiunly the market price for many recycled items has dropped significantly. The impact of this is that the Council are now having to pay for the recycling provision as the PFI contract had a bottom ceiling price before payments became due.
Basically a potential profit contract is now cost £100’s k a year leaving the whole cost of running a refuse collections having to come from the rates and not profit contributor.
Blame the past administration for signing a contract that only had one winner the contractor…We are all now expected to pay fir bad management contracts in the past.
St Giles has more visitors than probably any other place in Wrexham Town particularly with foreign tourists. It is a gem as a historical faith building and venue for many events both with a local context and broader appeal.
The lack of inclusion in the survey surely is a major oversight or yet again the Council seeing that only their assets are important.
Incidentally there is a Craft Fair from 10.00am this Saturday in St Giles and some fantastic work being done to create a display of knitted poppies – event on Sunday 11th November 6.00am with Rhos Male Voice Choir and lighting of beacon on the top of the Tower!At least with Brexit we may welcome Asian Flu into the country more readily – nothing like trading germs with a non EU country!
Not sure how in Wrexham scrutiny can be seen as Political — this could occur if there were substrantuive diffences in ideology – with two Groups of Independents in Wrexham and neither have any sort of manefesto it is hard to see that there are any ideology differences. What does then occur however is personality politics were issues are accepted or rejecyted depending on who the individual is that raises the issues.
People also need to give some serious consideration to standing for Council next election- gather info and support now but who knows what will be left in Wrexham at Election time.
MP you hit the nail on the head – Streetscene are already in place so why cant the Council just increase their role
Jimbow not sure how you arrive at 19 voices not being heard – by my reckoning it is 42– even those Councillors who belong to a Group that are on the Executive aren’t listened to.
The best saving that can come is a reduction in the number of Councillors as it now seem 50% don’t even bother to attend Executive meetings to take part.
As for the manner in which they behaved yesterday they should all read the constitution about not bringing the Council into disrepute- a number both on the Executive and the floor of the chamber over stepped the mark and should be reported for this. As ratepayers in Wrexham we should be getting a level of professionalism that befits the office of Councillor not petty playground bullying and back biting in the most childish of way. Looking at the web cast it is clear that the actual issue of the closure of the Work Opportunities service became secondary to Councillors scoring personal brownie points.
Misscheeky -it is really sad that you feel the way that you do for your area- it sounds like you feel the whole area has been left to criminal fraternity- is this the case for the whole estate or just certain parts. I read in the papers family names of people involved in crime that used to be in the papers 40 years ago when I last worked there with families – really tragic that families with problems despite having 10’s thousands of pounds being thrown at them still have these issues.
What are your Councillors doing to raise all of your issues? Are there no meetings of residents that everyone can get together to talk through and get a collective voice for everyone? Lots of you will be Council tenants and the landlord needs to look after everyone if there is anti-social behaviour going on — they are able to evict bad tenants.
What do Caia Park Partnership and The Venture do – don’t they provide help?
Rob like any set of incomplete figures you can read into them in many ways-
Car Parking – part of the erevenue increase has probably come about due to the St Marks Car Park closing and using Ty Pawb as the alternative- clearly the current issues at St Marks is likely to keep people moving to Ty Pawb or alternative locations – but what will happen if St Marks is refurbished and the homeless removed.
The expenditure projection to bring Ty Pawb up to the Car Park Quality Mark with lighting, security etc. was estimated at over £250k five years ago– how much longer can this go on without significant investment — where will the funding coming from as the revenue is actually already going into revenue expenditure on Ty Pawb.
A significant question to ask is – Is it correct that the income the Council are generating from monthly and seasonal tickets is all being regarded as income for Ty Pawb? This is having an effect on income generated at other car parks- the method being used to put all these monthlies to one space is distorting the actual use- would this carry on if a Trust was to take over or would the monthly income then be moved to Library or Waterworld Car Parks.Police Station Rental — if the £12,500 you have stated is correct is must be the cheapest site in Wrexham that has exclusive car parking for 20+ vehicles — private car parking spaces in Wrexham normally go for £750 upwards and the equivalent office floor space would be £20k plus — good of the Council to have such a cosy relationship with the Police that they have given the old Oriel away to them!!
Exhibition revenue of £2k – interesting one this as all free to enter – so presume it is someone paying to get something exhibited. The Council have however then had to pay for the early removal of the art exhibition die to the water leak in the gallery.
Shop – £10.7 – I’m assuming that this is total revenue not profit- what is the real figure if income and staffing costs were put together — how much would it be in the red!
Ticket events £1.5k that is way below the projects in the Business Plan
Venue Hire — is that actually cash in the bank or what they are hoping to generate? How much are they charging other internal Departments for the use of space? How much is actually new activity or organisations who have moved from another location i.e. Community Choir have moved with a loss of income to previous location.
