Melksham Area Board meeting of last week
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2010-08-04 13:24:17 - Graham EllisAnother overdue report - Wednesday of last week!
Melksham's area board is a group of the six unitary area ("county") councilors who meet every couple of months to listen to and vote on issues relating to six wards that make up Melksham and the "surrounding" countryside. They also have some funding opportunity. Area Board meetings are open to all, but the voting is limited to councilors.
As the Community Area Partnership "mirrors" the Area Board and to some extent provides a feed to it, I have hankered after getting along to an Area Board meeting since they started about a year ago - and managed to do so for the first time last week. And I was agreeably surprised by how well it ran / went (I probably should not have been surprised as there are a lot of very good people involved!)
OK - so it looks a bit odd to have a room with the best part of 200 people in it, with just three of them voting on issues (only 3 of the 6 councilors on the area board made it that evening, due to holidays). But sensible discussions, sane decisions made in the awarding of grants, etc.
I'll confess that I was taken aback when another member of the audience rose, waving a month-old article of this blog, and stated that it contained incorrect facts. "Why wasn't it checked with Atworth Parish Council" he asked. So I found myself saying "excuse me - that looks like a page from my personal blog ... why on earth are you raising it here ... ". See [here] for the article, and my follow up posts.
As part of the Community Rail Partnership, we *will* be asking the Area Board (and the CAP) for elements of support in the autumn and beyond - especially with research into the travel requirements and desires of the people of the area, and how they might change their travel plans based on what might (or might nt) be available, and at what price. Research / knowledge on this is incredibly sparse ... I'll have more to say in the subject when I catch up on writing up my Thursday meeting ;-)