Topic: | Re:So what happened? | |
Posted by: | Dan Murphy | |
Date/Time: | 29/01/15 11:28:00 |
In a nutshell The Traffic Officers' flawed, biased, and misleading report and recommendations were roundly criticised by Councillor Oulds, he wanted the entire report disregarded. Unfortunately the general feeling from Councillors was "we are where we are", so it was allowed to stand. But it was clear that the Traffic Officers had worked hard to misrepresent the situation. They didn't get away with it. There were the usual pleadings from Park & Staveley Road residents about "our life would be unbearable without our CPZ" and so Councillors voted to leave it in place. There was no real move to take it out, and that would have been too much to expect. It was clear that Traffic Officers' biased "consultation" of the proposed 12 road extension was outrageously flawed, and so the Councillors did vote for the consultation to be redone, but this time including ALL of Grove Park, on the basis that everyone is affected, so everyone should be allowed to have their views heard. That was a positive result because it recognised that the "salami slicing" road by road approach of the Traffic Department is fatally flawed and not representative of the area wide views. Traffic Officers did try to persuade Councillors that the two things should be done separately (presumably, consulting the roads that want a CPZ tomorrow, and consult everyone else in about 20 years time) but that was dismissed. Let's see how it reads in the minutes. One or two councillors complained that to consult with the whole area would be "a lot of hard work" but that was also dismissed because it is sort of, er, their job. The meeting was not as well attended a it could have been, but judging from the loud applause after certain speakers, it was pretty clear hat the overwhelming views of "No CPZ" were very strong in the room. The Councillors struggled quite hard on several occasions to cont how many of them (about ten) were actually voting for or against each motion, or abstaining. It did not give much confidence about their ability to manage an area wide consultation. Chairman Sam Hearn did point out quite sharply at one stage that the Traffic Officers' numbers simply didn't add up, so there was at least a nod to mathematical accuracy. the large chart that Jonathan Knight produced was splendid and there were a lot of raised eyebrows and dropped jaws standing there looking at it. It showed a large detailed map of grove park with a red dot on every house (2,100) who voted against CPZ in the 2011 petition, and a yellow dot on the houses (158) who were in favour. That picture really was worth a thousand words and probably influenced the councillors in their decision to extend the consultation process to everyone in GP. |