Dear Sir,
I have just been catching up on the last few copies of Newton News and wish to comment up on a few articles.
A local councillor wants a third pedestrian crossing on Central Avenue costing £80,000 of taxpayers’ money which he appears to regard as a trivial sum, rather than educating kids to use the existing ones, or learn the Green Cross Code (and this is despite the flashing lights and advisory 20 zone signs).
Then we have Durham Council going through another of their sham statutory consultations to ‘ask’ where money can be saved while not providing information into which a taxpayer can drill down to determine where money is being spent.
My message to the Council is simple: stop wasting public money. My message to all councillors is: the money belongs to taxpayers, it’s not yours, so spend it responsibly, where it’s really needed. Ask yourself whether you would pay for it if it was your own money.
There was also an article referring to consultation on the police station situation. I had a look at this and was shocked at the lack of information provided to make an informed choice. I responded by saying it was impossible to make an informed choice without costings and performance implications for each option. Probably just another sham consultation, but certainly not a meaningful one.
I still feel massively unimpressed by the fact that the last police station was so poorly designed and constructed that it had to be demolished after just a few decades when the one in Durham, for example, lasted hundreds of years. Of course we should have local access to a police office. Why not use some of the numerous empty spaces in the town centre?
John Snowball