Dave's View

Biased Echo and Poor Reporting May 18, 2012

Before I get into the the blog, just a reminder these are my personal views.

As I predicted in my previous blog article, the negative press arrived but it was more than negative. The article in Today’s Gloucestershire Echo “Bid for free parking during High Street work is rejected” by Robin Jenkins was unbalanced, politically biased and I believe misleading to say the least. It was probably the most politically biased journalism I’ve seen in a very long time. Clearly Robin Jenkins (and the Echo Editor) are running Mike Sztymiak’s campaign to be re-elected as County Councillor. It is one sided in the extreme. In the 400 words, 38 are given to the opposing viewpoint and none of those put the counter-argument.

The good news is due to modern technology I can put my views out to the world through this blog without censorship, these argument would never find their way into the Echo without some serious editing.

Tewkesbury Town is one of 49 Parishes in the Borough of Tewkesbury, they have had approximately £250,000 of County Council money spent on the High Street safety scheme. At the end of it they will have a very nice high street. This did not happen in Winchcombe where the town centre had major road works for the best part of a year, without the resurfacing.

This is a County Council scheme for which Cllr Sztymiak appeared to support at the outset and now he wants the Borough Council which has a much, much smaller budget to pick up the tab. What lobbying has he done in the County Council I wonder.

The Borough Council has been running a business grant scheme for most of this calendar year, this is aimed at new businesses and promoting existing businesses. Only two town centre businesses have applied for (and received by the way) grants. Despite publicity through the Tewkesbury Chamber of Commerce and Federation of Small Businesses, the Echo and the Council web site.

The continual negative press, including letters to the media deter visitors to the town from the local area. I have had first hand information when I was Mayor and people outside of Tewkesbury commenting on what they had read, said it had put them off going to the town. Cllr Sztymiak’s motion adds to that negativity, along with the article today.

Just having free parking will not attract anyone, think about it, would you jump into your car just because a local town had free parking. You need a reason to go there in the first place. Tewkesbury has some great attractions but fails to advertise or exploit them anywhere near well enough.

Tewkesbury has some excellent retailers but these are let down by others who can’t or won’t match the service offer of the best. For example, I bought something from a town shop today, not a smile, not have a nice weekend – just a frowning face. Hardly a ringing endorsement. Another trader yesterday told me – well the car parking is too expensive it is £8.00 all day. Yes it is £8.00 all day in a short stay car park, if you stay for a few hours it works out at a £1.00 per hour. If you stay in a long stay car park it is 50p per hour, in one car park it is a £1.00 all day.

When I said that there were excellent shops in Tewkesbury the individual agreed and said they liked a particular shop but didn’t buy from there as it was too expensive. Good to see the traders supporting each other!

I’ve also been in shops where the retailers are moaning to the customers about what they see as the poor state of things. I’m afraid that’s not the way to sell things and why would you want to go back.

Now to Councillor Sztymiak’s disingenuous and misleading comments. Yes the Borough Council has reserves of nearly £20M but only £1.2M of that is revenue reserves. Government rules prevent public sector authorities moving money between revenue and capital accounts. So what he says is not actually the whole picture. I find this surprising as Cllr Sztymiak is on the Council’s Budget Working Group and I have to say if he does not know the difference between capital and revenue he should carefully consider his position on that sub-committee.

Now if the Borough Council were to spend that reserve on say free car parking and there was an emergency (such as flood etc) and money wasn’t available. What do you think our friend Robin Jenkins and his colleagues might make of that and more importantly the victims we could not help.

The council would lose £23,500 of badly needed revenue. This revenue supports things such as Cascades swimming pool (by the way he voted against the recommendations on Cascades at the same meeting). Difficult decisions have to be taken and the balance of supporting the needs of traders in one parish has to be weighed against the needs of the people both in that parish and the other 48 parishes. They are not easy decisions but on weighing the argument most of the council decided that they could not support losing the £23,500 revenue but could support traders through the Business Grant Scheme.

Lastly, I do not see Tewkesbury Town Council supporting or promoting there own town – strangely Councillor Sztymiak is also a member of that council. I think it time Tewkesbury has a go at trying to help itself, rather than waiting for others to do it for them.

What is needed is a positive view instead of the negativity that Robin Jenkins and his colleagues think sells newspapers.

Full Council Meeting – From the Benches May 16, 2012

Yesterday was my first council meeting in two years sitting in the debating chamber. This is just my perspective of what went on.

Firstly it was a long meeting, with some difficult issues to face, so here is my quick run through.

After the normal formalities, it was the election of Leader and Deputy Leader, followed by the membership of the council’s committee. For completeness these are the Executive, Overview and Scrutiny, Audit, Planning and Licensing, then various adhoc committees. Councillors Robert Vines and Allen Keyte were elected Leader and Deputy Leader of the Council no change. There were minor changes to the main committees but for my part I remain on the Executive and have returned to being Vice Chairman of the Audit committee. The Leader of the Council then delivered his report, I can provide a copy if you want one.

We then elected Councillor Brian Calway to be our representative on the Gloucestershire Police and Crime Panel, other members come from the County and other District Councils in Gloucestershire. The role is to scrutinise the new Police Commissioner when one is elected in November of this year.

Next up was the Council Plan for the next three years. This was agreed although our opposite numbers did try to make some environmental changes to the plan however, we see these as being part of everything we do anyway and there is no need to add every policy to what is a relatively short sharp explanation of direction of travel.

The new standard regime was agreed, at least in outline, we still await full government information on how this will fully operate. Essentially this is a replacement to the standards board, where Councillors can be brought to task for breaking codes of conduct etc.

The next major item was a difficult one particularly for me – a motion to council - Councillor M G Sztymiak will propose and Councillor P N Workman will second that: ‘This Council enables free parking in Tewkesbury Town Centre Car Parks during the period when the High Street is being resurfaced (6-17 June 2012) in order to mitigate against the effects of commercial damage and to protect the economic vitality of the Town.’

Whilst I sympathise with traders in the town car parking is very often seen as the problem, in fact it is only a symptom. The proposers said that free car parking would bring people into the town. It doesn’t stack up to me that people would travel anywhere just for free parking, they need something to go for. We need to get the offer right in Tewkesbury and we are working on it as hard as we can.That said the end result of the resurfacing works, as well as the improvements that have already taken place in the town centre, will be a huge benefit to the town. But like all other areas that are lucky enough to receive resurfacing works, there will probably be a bit of disruption while they are taking place. However, opening up our car parks to offer free parking would have cost our taxpayers £23,500 and therefore is not a viable option. Importantly, businesses in Tewkesbury town centre are able to apply for up to £1000 from our business support grant, which has been introduced to help businesses in the borough to grow. Despite being widely publicised, only a couple of businesses from Tewkesbury town centre have applied for a grant, so I strongly recommend that they get in touch to make the most out of the scheme as it will help to provide much longer-term benefits.

The next item was also a difficult one – the papers had the title Council Office Refurbishment, in reality this is essential maintenance in the first instance. There will also be some upgrading to windows and ceilings, this is to save money in heating etc. If we don’t spend now, this will cost much much more in the future, Government has been accused of spending our children’s money and I don’t want to leave a large bill for the future when we can nip a lot of this in the bud now. Unfortunately due to previous council decisions, made at the time for the right reasons, has left us with a larger maintenance issue than we would have likes, so we have to put that right now. One silver lining to this is that we hope that much of the repairs and renovation work can be done by local firms. This means the money will go back into the local economy.

So a long evening, difficult and not pleasant decisions to make but that is what we have to do in these times. But no doubt these issues make a great negative news story.