This week we saw our second North East Area Committee meeting and the first to be held in the North East of the town. The venue was St Johns Church.
36 residents joined councillors, Officers and the SNT Police Sergeant to debate a number of issues.
The meeting started with an informative presentation on the benefit of the Olympics to Ipswich, this was given by Council Officer John Stebbings. Some useful feedback from Rushmere resident and owner of the Lattice Lodge B & B was given.
The main part of the meeting dealt with parking issues at the Ipswich Hospital and neighbouring streets. Useful input from residents, councillors and the police. Ipswich Hospital have not been the best neighbour in the past but at least this time they sent their Security Manager, who was very responsive and will soon have car parking as one of his responsibilities.
Residents from Orwell and Pearce Rd also highlighted the problems they face as their streets have become a 'rat run' for commuters hoping to avoid Foxhall Rd. We hope to have a public meeting in Foxhall Rd in the next few months to try and help solve the problem.
That last part of the meeting was important but failed to have resident participation, we agreed to a verge protection scheme in Lindsey Rd and also (good news for Rushmere residents) it was agreed to purchase new football goals for Dumbarton Rd Recreation Ground.
I was pleased that a number of you attended but would hope we can increase not only the number of residents who attend but also improve resident participation in the meeting.
If you have any ideas on how to improve the meeting, please let us know - such improvements could include,such simple measures on where we all sit to the location of the meetings.
3 comments:
Alasdair you are asking for ideas as to how to improve public involvement. How about this.
1. Invite people. Not everyone reads the Star or your blog. Or even ours! Maybe a mail drop wouldn't be a bad idea!
2. Give the public the right to ask unscripted questions, without having to give notice.
We are looking at mail drops- but they did not work well with Forums, we had hoped to use the area forum email list but there was a concern on data protection- that will be resolved next week.
Public can ask questions, but my submitting a question beforeb they wwill get a full answer but we hope to have a Q &A session with all Cllrs at future meetings.
A number of residents have sent in views on how we can improve the process - we will get these to work
Think you will find that if you have a controversial issue on the agenda people will turn up. Mostly you will only get the usual suspects the rest of the time.
Maybe you should be more controversial Alasdair. Although we'd have to declare an interest here, controversial councillors are our bread and butter!
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