e-Newsletters Dear [NAME], just in case you've not had time to visit the Harrowgate Hill Community Line lately... here's just some of the latest articles right to your mail box;
Review of Supported Bus Services
Our Council is to review which bus service it supports throughout the town and they would like to hear your views on what they are currently supporting… should they continue with supporting existing services... what you would like to see supported - people from the area within Mayfair and Glebe Road and members of the Harrowgate Club should get straight on to this one!
The Council currently pays for some early morning, late night and Sunday bus services, as well as providing buses in areas that would not otherwise have a route; these are known as ‘Supported Services’ The Council are now reviewing these services and would like to encourage local people (that’s you) to give their views by filling in a questionnaire that will be available until the 17th October 2008.
If you would like to have your say on these existing services or where you feel there is a need to have additional services, you can obtain a questionnaire from the Town Hall reception, the Tourist Information centre (now in the Dolphin centre) and online at the Darlington Bus User Survey 145582
For more information click here
The credit crunch and your council tax
Earlier in the year I wrote a small piece, titled “Over all Council Tax set to rise by 4.78% - Deciphering the information” and after attending a further presentation on this subject I thought I would share my understandings with you.
But first some figures
The budgeted Council ‘Revenue’ income for 2008-09 of £221.6m (100%), is made up from;
Council Tax £37.8m (17.1%)
Fees and Charges (car parking/fines, leisure admissions, rents/rates) £34.8m (15.7%)
Reserves £1.6m (0.7%)
Government grants (Formula, Schools, Area based & Specific) £147.4m (66.5%)
And is spent on;
Children’s services £89m (40.5%)
Community services £102.1m (46.1%)
Chief executive, Corporate and Costs £29.6m (13.4%)
The budgeted Council ‘Capital’ income for 2008-09 was £36.7m (100%), which is made up from;
Grants £18.5m (50.4%)
Revenue £1.9m (5.2%)
Borrowing £7.7m (20.1%)
Capital receipts £8.6m (23.4%)
And is spent on;
Children’s services £17.3m
Housing £10.7m
Transport £3.1m
Other £1.9m
With a difference of 4.7m which in prudence was not committed as experience tells our council ‘expected Capital receipts’ don’t always transpire as expected.
The balancing act
Government grant incomes are announced 3 years in advice and are fixed, which helps our council to manage their accounts. Our council calculates Fees and Charges form the income of previous years and Council Tax makes up the rest along with Capital income to help fund everything else.
Spending is exactly the same, a balancing act; if the council unexpectedly or is pressured to spend more than its income - then one of two things must happen;
1. Finding, which had been allocated/budgeted for the provision of one council service must end. A council service or department must close or offer less or even make redundancies.
2. Increase the next years budget to incorporate the over spend of the previous year and the repeated provision for the next.
The problem to you with option 2 is that for every percentage increase to the overall budget means a fourfold increase to your council tax.
Additionally this year our council anticipated the sale of surplus land such as the former Beaumont Hill and Springfield school sites, which as a result of the credit crunch and consequent downturn of the building sector, have not realised - leaving our council with some very difficult decisions to make.
And to add that political touch… the conservatives constant bombardment of demands for subsidisations and funding hasn’t helped. It is just as well our council carefully considered each request and rejected their demands.
>>> Reference
I’ll be writing more on our Council Tax as consultation starts in October with some encouragement for you to get involved and submit to the council your thoughts of what you would like to see them achieve for the whole of the town or concentrate on in just your area.
No flowers... nor berries for the starlings
You may have noticed that many of our roadside trees in Harrowgate Hill which normally flower and produce small orange berries (which during October migrating starlings from Eastern Europe devourer as they travel west in search of food) haven’t produced a single berry this year.
I spoke to our arboricultural Officer who said. ‘I did a little research over the weekend regarding the trees and have been unable to find anything that would affect them all. If it were one or even a few trees it might have pointed to something sinister such as a harmful pathogen - but as this has affected all of the trees - it suggests it was nothing more than the weather’.
‘In my opinion I feel that the flower buds, in their infancy, were burnt off with severe frost. We had a relatively warmish beginning to the year which encouraged the trees to bud, and then we had a few days of constant frost with very bad frost on a night. I believe that it is this which killed off the flowers preventing the production of seeds in the autumn. In cases like this we generally monitor the situation over the next growing season. I have looked at other Sorbus aria trees all over town and they are all the same. However, Sorbus aucuparia are producing loads of berries this year’.
No doubt during October we’ll probably still be visited by the thousands of migrating starlings from Eastern Europe, as they travel west in search of food. And they’ll probably even visit the trees as they’ve always done looking for their fill… so if you’re wondering just what starlings most favour and fancy helping them on their way… they love scraps, seeds, nuts from nut feeders and they also probe into lawns for worms and grubs.
Update on the sale of Beaumont
The Council from time to time sells land that it no longer requires for example old school sites - clearly one of which is the Beaumont Hill site.
The money raised from the sales is invested in new assets or refurbishing existing assets, for example; repairing existing schools or building new ones.
You will all have heard of the "credit crunch" and the impact this is having on house sales and the house building industry and Darlington is no exception. As a consequence, at the present time, builders are either not buying land at all or making offers - which are way off the market value.
With this in mind the council have had no other option but to reject the offer made by Bellway Homes for the land at Beaumont. Which means residents who took time out of their hectic lives to view these plans, will have the prospect of going through the process once again, should another developer show interest in the land.
Additionally this decision to reject Bellway Homes offer brings to an end a suggestion made by a member of the Friends of the Hill Community Association - which I had raised with council officers - to landscape the green area to the front of Salters Lane into a communal gardens. The suggestion would have created our very own ‘Beaumont Communal Gardens’ renovating the iron railings - including some seating, boarders, shrubs, bushes, flower beds and a circular path - which would have brightened up Harrowgate Hill as a whole, in addition to making the area more accessible for all… somewhere to sit and watch the world go by, without having to plod along to the South Park.
I do hope to continue these discussions as and when a more suitable developer is found.
Best regards
Mark