Happy New Year
A happy new year to all the readers of the blog, and to everyone else in the ward, in Bury and, what the hell, the entire world.
2008 has seen lots of action from the Lib Dem Councillors in St Mary’s. There’s been really big stuff like the plans for the regeneration of Prestwich and the big improvements that are going to come courtesy of the new Prestwich plan. We’ve also seen the creation of exciting plans for Drinkwater Park in conjunction with the Forestry Commission, which will start to come to fruition this year. And of course we led the fight locally to oppose the Congestion Charge, making sure that Bury Council opposed it, calling for the referendum and campaigning hard for the eventual “no” vote.
The centre of Prestwich Village received a deep clean in the spring, getting rid of the grime that had blighted the area. We also finally got the Radius fountainworking, even though legal technicalities stopped us getting it reomved! And it’s been great to see the new arrivals like Croma, Ego, and Costa Coffee fill the new retail units in the Radius building. THey’re great arrivals for the area.
We’ve been working hard in tough financial conditions to get improvements locally. There have been several road repairs this year such as Spring Vale and Barnhill Road, and we’ve finally got rid of the silly second set of traffic lights at the junction of Bury New Road and St Ann’s Road. Where we’ve seen street lights not working, we’ve got them fixed, and where there’ve been litter hotspots like Sandy Lane we’ve got them tidied up. In fact, in the budget this year the Lib Dems successfully amended Tory proposals and increased street cleaning provision by £300,000.
Locally we’ve supported tenants and residents associations for Rainsough, and Sherbourne Court / Warwick Street. We’ve helped local residents on St Ann’s Road take on the Council and protect their gardens. And we’ve been the only effective opposition to the Tories in Bury, supporting the staff and gaining key concessions over Job Evaluation, whilst pressing in Council for more government funding for Bury, and the protection of our local post offices.
The party in Bury has gone from strength to strength. Lib Dems in Bury have now got more Councillors than ever before, are challenging in more areas than ever before, and won more votes than ever before in May’s elections. The local party has held many exciting and popular events this year, and has worked with a wider range of people and community groups than ever before. And personally of course, my election as parliamentary candidate for Bury North in November was a great honour. As someone born and raised in Bury, it is great to see such local improvements for the town and the party.
2009 promises much. I hope we can live up to it, and I hope that the year is a success for the ward, the borough, and everyone in it.
Happy new year.
Rick
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