A councillor voted against her own motion at a council meeting last week after it was changed to something she could not agree with.
Asking the Isle of Wight Council to ‘put the wellbeing of residents at the heart of placemaking in our towns and villages’, Cllr Julie Jones-Evans was looking for support on her motion.
During the September full council meeting, time ran out to discuss her motion after someone told her to ‘shut up’ while she was presenting it. At last Wednesday’s meeting, Cllr Jones-Evans said she would not go over what she had previously said as ‘clearly some members found it boring’.
Cllr Dave Stewart, leader, proposed to change the motion to say the council would continue to put the wellbeing of residents at the heart of placemaking. He said while he agreed with Cllr Jones-Evans over the importance of wellbeing, the administration had already been doing taking the issue into account.
Cllr Jones-Evans said she could not accept the motion as she did not believe that was the case. She said:
“There is no point in putting a motion forward to say we are doing very well, I don’t believe we are. If you add ‘continue to’, well then we will continue to do it poorly.”
Cllr Paul Fuller gave an example of the council ‘not thinking about people’s wellbeing’ with the proposed car parking charges along Gurnard Esplanade which could affect elderly residents who park on the seafront and go along for a flat walk He said:
“Local businesses are going to lose their livelihoods. They have already been kicked down by COVID-19 and we are now giving them a kick as well.
Article continues below this advertisement “The Isle of Wight Council does not seem to demonstrate to my community what they are trying to do locally to protect other people’s wellbeing by the decisions that they are [taking].”
Councillors voted in favour of the amendment (24 to 15) and then passed the motion, with 31 votes in favour with 8 against.
Those against included councillors Jones-Evans, John Howe, Karl Love, Geoff Brodie, Ian Stephens, Reg Barry, Andrew Garratt and Graham Perks.
Vote them ALL out.
Too many vested interests and contacts formed with developers to ever be able to make honest, open, and transparent life changing decisions for the majority of Island people now.
Many here know this now, and many know the ‘next lot’ will eventually be similar.
But to allow those ‘in’ to remain ‘in’ gives them a dictator handling of affairs, feeling they are beyond reproach and at least a ‘new’ council would have less likely dubious links, and all new blood would have, hopefully some decent councillors doing the right thing, for the right reasons, NOT just looking out for themselves.
the very fact that they are actually wasting time discussing “putting wellbeing at the heart” proves they are all not fit for the jobs they do and have no understanding of their roles at all.
The very existence and core purpose of the council is to ensure the well being of islanders and the island in general.
They are tasked with overseeing and administering the structural functions of isle of wight society, to ensure that their core purpose is delivered upon, with checks and balances in place to highlight any deficiencies or problems before they arise.
If they are incapable of delivering the balance between economic stability, social cohesion and financial prudence, then they all need to hand in their notices and let someone in who can provide jobs, care and frugality.
If you don’t know what the cryptic ‘placemaking’ policy is…
Placemaking is a multi-faceted approach to the planning, design and management of public spaces. Placemaking capitalizes on a local community’s assets, inspiration, and potential, with the intention of creating public spaces that promote people’s health, happiness, and well-being. It is political due to the nature of place identity. Placemaking is both a process and a philosophy that makes use of urban design principles. It can be either official and government led, or community driven grass roots tactical urbanism, such as extending sidewalks with chalk, paint, and planters, or open streets events such as Bogotá, Colombia’s Ciclovía. Good placemaking makes use of underutilized space to enhance the urban experience at the pedestrian scale to build habits of locals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placemaking
For once, I think Chad Millen is right, it’s more about building houses than making public spaces better. Mind you, he posts on every single island echo article so was bound to happen. 😀
If that’s what it is then say so. All this gobbledegook merely antagonises the general public. Also it those using it very likely have different ideas as to its meaning.
Imagine being told to ‘shut up’ how rude to say the least – thought we lived in a democratic society? Obviously this council doesn’t.
Just had a leaflet delivered by Royal Mail, courtesy of the council – says nothing that we don’t already have rammed down our throats day after day through advertising, news bulletins etc. Hands face council waste of space.
Another example of wasting our money – rather than leaflets they could have found something more worthwhile to use it on ???
Well we haven’t seen any care or well-being from the iow council for as long as I can remember!!
Let’s ask the people who elected us what they want, then we can poo poo it and tell them to shut up, and do want we wanted to do in the first place.