Weekly Column
I was just thinking....
I was just thinking....
Was only 16th May that I wrote?:
The election is over, and Richard Pages' replacement was elected and Ken Coleman managed to hold on to the County Council position, so all's well with the world.
But is it?
I don't know about you, but I'm disappointed that the Labour candidate was very quiet, the Conservatives pushed David Gauke for all he was worth (with Ken keeping his head down!) and the Lib-Dems have got their act together.
In the press this week it is reported that the Town Council have all but given up on the Skate-board site on Velvet Lawn and everywhere else. Even the swimming pool site is suddenly deemed 'too expensive to develop'. Strange that!
Never mind, they now have another £20,000 to put aside and go with the £250,000 set by for a project they cannot agree on, no-one knows what or even if it could be done. Typical Lib-Dem decision taking that!
With an election just 2 budgets away, you don't think they could reduce our 'precept' back to pre-Lib-Dem levels, do you? I've been racking my brains to work out what they have been spending the money on. Additional staff perhaps? A third information centre, maybe? Oh, I know, VE day celebrations to be notified in the Town Council newsletter that I never seem to receive (maybe they don't love me anymore!).
W/e 28th May 2005
The latest wheeze in the town is lottsa shopping, but no customers to do it.
OK, not quiet like that, but we have Waitrose looking to expand their supermarket and loose parking spaces then, not to be outdone, Tesco have been given the 'RED' light by the Borough planning mob about the land they own at Stag Lane, so why not re-develop the existing store?
The current idea is to build on the Water Lane car park – yes that's right! Good eh?
Two things the town has very little of, is open space and parking facilities.
Reality suggests that Waitrose will expand (loosing a few parking spaces) and Tesco will expand and loose a number of existing spaces. My money is on a multistory car-parking facilities being built on what remains of the Water Lane site, to replace those lost.
The fact that Berkhamsted is a historic market town with a very large conservation area seems to have by-passed the money men, after all, that is exactly what it is all about.
I still can't get my head around the '60s development that was allowed between Water Lane and the Town Hall, but that's another story!
