I attended my first Neighbourhood Forum yesterday, was very interesting, most of it was what I expected but right at the start there was a little bit of controversy, a woman stood up to present a proposal about setting up a monthly farmers market in our town. I thought this was a good idea, the town could really do with it and it sounded like she'd been doing a lot of planning with traders....and then a council member got up and started complaining quite angrily that the proposal should have been presented to them first and that they had not heard anything about it at all! They talked about how the woman should have gone to the council first before bringing it up in that meeting. I felt angry at that, from what I heard the woman was just presenting the idea and that it was all still in the planning stage. I personally wouldn't have known that I would have had to have gone to the council first to talk about something like that.
I talked to the woman after the meeting and told her I thought that what she'd done was great, she thanked me and then told me 'one of the council was actually on our board, so they did know about it' I was so shocked! How could the council just lie like that?!
I once thought about setting up a business in town a cyber café actually and heard that the local council was already looking in to the idea themselves. So I visited my council member and told her my plans and asked if I could be involved in what they were doing as I felt I could be of use to such a project. I was told that if I wanted to set it up as a business that would be a great idea and a help for the town. They promised to get in touch after a meeting.......they never got in touch and I found out a few months later that they had gone ahead and set up a cyber café. Needless to say I was angry and I felt very let down by the whole thing.
So yes I have very little faith in the council right now.
