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News & Goings On
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//
carparklonggrass.txt
10th
February
2004
A Car Park for Gornal - further away than ever.
The prospect of a car park for the village centre has been kicked into the long grass a few times over the past
twenty years, but at the Area Committee Meeting last week the ball was booted right into Councillor Caunt's Redhall Road
back garden - where it will no doubt conveniently stay until the Council elections in June are safely negotiated by the
incumbents.
Regular Yampy visitors will remember that when power changed hands at Dudley Council last year, Gornal Councillors
Millward and Stanley became very bullish about the prospects for a relatively rapid resolution on this matter, and
expressed righteous - and justifiable - disdain regarding the lack of progress made by their predecessors over many years.
However, things took a turn for the worse at the special public meeting last July
(click here
for report), when it became clear that the Councillors were finding it more difficult to turn the wheels of bureaucracy
when in power than it had been to shout from the sidelines previously.
At last week's meeting ex-Councillor (Labour) Jeff Jewkes, speaking from the floor, asked for an update and was told
by Cllr. Caunt that it would be pointless to consider the Gornal car parking issue until the once separate matter of
what is going to be done about Redhall School is decided. Meeting Chairman Cllr. Stanley, who until that point had
uncharacteristically avoided 'politicising' the proceedings, then accused Jeff Jewkes of trying to make party points
in the run up to the election - a strange accusation, given that Mr. Jewkes was asking the same question that
Cllr's Stanley and Millward were themselves posing up until a few months ago.
And when will that Redhall decision take place, so that the car park issue is once again on the agenda? Director of
Education John Freeman had no firm reply, despite having been mandated to do so at the previous Area Committee, in response
to a ward issues request from Cllr. Finch. Councillor Finch was, of course, the man lambasted by the other Gornal Councillors
for the lack of progress on this issue when his party was in power! Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
newsdesk@yampy.co.uk. -->
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