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Tidy Towns Doing Councils Job?

ClovenHoof

Firstly, I want to say that I am a fan of the Tidy Towns movement. Folks sprucing up their community and it creates a good community spirit etc. Everyone wins.

However, one thing I have noticed is how councils are fobbing off their responsibility more and more to Tidy Towns groups. When TT first started they would basically be charged with beautifying villages and towns by painting up buildings, creating heritage and amenities infrastructure in tandem with councils who collected refuge and repaired pavements and so on.

Now we have Councils doing NOTHING and more and more Tidy Towns groups doing the councils jobs. They are collecting litter, managing refuge bins and now many are doing serious infrastructural works in the community - sometimes surprisingly large projects - which involve the TT groups making major investments in equipment and man power. Then raising the finances to pay for this.

Why are we still paying rates and taxes to councils then? They have become essentially personas non grata in most Irish provincial towns and villages when something needs doing. They only arrive to make sure they get their money and then they vanish back to their plush offices.

I think the councils are using and abusing Tidy Town's to get out of doing the work and projects we pay them to perform?

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snubbleste

Inform the Council of the Gateway scheme, where the unemployed are made work in yellow bibs, 20 hours a week for 22 months for a taxable extra €20pw http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/unemployment_and_redundancy/employment_support_schemes/gateway_scheme.html

Meathlass

Yes definitely.

There's also the Pride of Place scheme where alot of local amenity groups do large projects with very small grant money from the local authority.

To be honest though, the councils have no money so I don't see any alternative.

Teyla Emmagan

Meathlass wrote: »

To be honest though, the councils have no money so I don't see any alternative.

This is the issue. The councils just don't have the finances or manpower anymore.

suicide_circus

Teyla Emmagan wrote: »

This is the issue. The councils just don't have the finances or manpower anymore.

Gone are the days when you'd see eight bone idle men supping tae and staring into a hole in deep contemplation

renegademaster

Meathlass wrote: »

Yes definitely.

There's also the Pride of Place scheme where alot of local amenity groups do large projects with very small grant money from the local authority.

To be honest though, the councils have no money so I don't see any alternative.

Teyla Emmagan wrote: »

This is the issue. The councils just don't have the finances or manpower anymore.

they're broke now cos the household charge taxes that were meant to go to the local councils was diverted to denis o briens deep pockets!! this is all part of the master plan imho

ClovenHoof

Teyla Emmagan wrote: »

This is the issue. The councils just don't have the finances or manpower anymore.

Every council office around this country is filled with extremely well paid staff. No shortage of investment there.

ClovenHoof

suicide_circus wrote: »

Gone are the days when you'd see eight bone idle men supping tae and staring into a hole in deep contemplation

These days they are sitting in plush offices contemplating Farmville.

Tokyo

ClovenHoof wrote: »

Every council office around this country is filled with extremely well paid staff. No shortage of investment there.

Every council office around the country is filled with moderately paid office staff, many of which had to take huge pay and pension hits in the last few years.

The problem boils down to men with boots on the ground - there aren't any. Anybody who can be retired out, is, and no new hires are being taken on. The guys you see fixing the roads anymore aren't council workers - they are outside firms contracted in by the council for one job at a time.

kneemos

mike_ie wrote: »

Every council office around the country is filled with moderately paid office staff, many of which had to take huge pay and pension hits in the last few years.

The problem boils down to men with boots on the ground - there aren't any. Anybody who can be retired out, is, and no new hires are being taken on. The guys you see fixing the roads anymore aren't council workers - they are outside firms contracted in by the council for one job at a time.

Thank God for that given the quality of what they call repairs.

lazybones32

Meathlass wrote: »

To be honest though, the councils have no money so I don't see any alternative.

Watch to see if your local Council will start spending money in the month of December - to use the quota allowed so they will receive the same budget for next year. We got several new road signs 2 years ago in about 500m of road...all done before the glorious 'workers' of the CC went on Xmas holidays

flas

suicide_circus wrote: »

Gone are the days when you'd see eight bone idle men supping tae and staring into a hole in deep contemplation

Not really,I work in the city centre and out the back of work two weeks ago there was a groyup of 6 council men there for the week, one person was digging a hole while the other 5 literally stood against the wall looking at him, when he was done with his tiny amount of digging, one other lad got off the wall, scooped up the bits of cobble stones he had taken out of the ground and put them in a wheelbarrow! That was it, I watched on my lunch break for a full half hour with one of my work mates and we could not get over the stereotype coming to life right in front of our eyes!

kneemos

flas wrote: »

Not really,I work in the city centre and out the back of work two weeks ago there was a groyup of 6 council men there for the week, one person was digging a hole while the other 5 literally stood against the wall looking at him, when he was done with his tiny amount of digging, one other lad got off the wall, scooped up the bits of cobble stones he had taken out of the ground and put them in a wheelbarrow! That was it, I watched on my lunch break for a full half hour with one of my work mates and we could not get over the stereotype coming to life right in front of our eyes!

There was three council workers on the road outside our house years ago that spent the bones of three weeks in the hut playing cards because it was raining.

In fairness most of them look busier these days.

Lapin

snubbleste wrote: »

Inform the Council of the Gateway scheme, where the unemployed are made work in yellow bibs, 20 hours a week for 22 months for a taxable extra €20pw http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/unemployment_and_redundancy/employment_support_schemes/gateway_scheme.html

Its not taxable.

snubbleste

Lapin wrote: »

Its not taxable.

Eh, it is. Peruse the link provided.

evolving_doors

Meathlass wrote: »

Yes definitely.

There's also the Pride of Place scheme where alot of local amenity groups do large projects with very small grant money from the local authority.

_To be honest though, the councils have no money so I don't see any alternative..

But yet my cousin has the road outside his house resurfaced so many times in the last 5 years that its now a half a foot higher with rainwater flowing into his driveway. + they used the wrong stone (he's a civil engineer) so when cars pass theres stones flying into his garden where the kids play. + there was no potholes there to start with!

During a brief stint in summer job they let me transfer in the figures for previous year's budget.
"NO NO "the guy says "you have to increase all those numbers by 10%". Why? I ask. "Because if we dont spend more than the previous year we wont get the same for next year".!!

Hence why I think the money IS there.

ClovenHoof

The reason why council lads in the old days stood around holes in the road is they were waiting on some equipment like a JCB or such to come along, or an engineer from a utility provider to inform them on a particular problem like encountering an old electric or gas line; even small Irish villages can have scores of old electric, telephone/telegraph and other lines installed by the British Army/RIC back in the day which were not listed in town plans. When the LUAS was built literally thousands of unknown utility lines installed by the British Army Signals and Engineers were discovered.

These delays were cause by bureaucracy at the council offices not doing their job by sourcing the equipment/engineers/utility companies to resolve the matter.

It was not the fault of the lads looking at the hole. They were forced to wait around.

The council lads with the shovels are gone. The council bureaucrats remain.

Chinasea

Does seem to be a certain amount still of mismanagement, farcical industrial relations, and lack of law enforcement (littering for example.)

Inner city Dublin is absolutely filthy from fly tipping, yet nothing being done to address or proactively enforce numerous idle empty laws.

Dun Laoghaire has had countless public bins removed allegedly due to lack of resources, yet many countries, a lot poorer than Ireland can supply and service basic amenities like a few bloo*y public litter bins.

Chinasea

Sunny Dayz

Ah here! The council boys still doss! I work in a half developed business park and a van would often come in, park up somewhere quiet, often where I can see from my office window and they have a snooze in the van for half an hour!

Tail Docker

Mad panic around here at the mo putting up new flashy signs and re-surfacing roads everywhere(N.Kildare) Anyone who lives around here will know what I mean - the diversions have diversions there's so many roads being resurfaced. Odd timing? I doubt it. Burning the budget to keep it for next year more like. Upside is better roads. Downside is they're resurfacing roads that don't need it and ignoring ones that do. The usual guff.

TT is IMO "The Well intentioned Mugs Association" - letting the Council off the hook. It's up there with collecting for Crumlin Childrens Hospital. The fcukers in Government should fund it fully, but they don't, so good people step in, letting them off the hook. But they shouldn't be let off that hook, IMO.

Lapin

Lapin wrote: »

Its not taxable.

snubbleste wrote: »

Eh, it is. Peruse the link provided.

Okay. What I should have said is that, while it is taxable. Its not actually taxed.

Those on Jobseekers of €188 pw earning an extra €20 through this new work for fuckall scam scheme will not pay any tax.

snubbleste

Lapin wrote: »

Okay. What I should have said is that, while it is taxable. Its not actually taxed.
Those on Jobseekers of €188 pw earning an extra €20 through this new work for fuckall scam scheme will not pay any tax.

Eh, eh..

an adult who is married/cohabiting + 2 children will take home only €4.30 extra when PRSI at 4% on all income is applied to their JSA & Gateway top-up.
an adult in the same situation with 4 children will take home less than €2 extra when PRSI is applied.
a cohabiting parent on the scheme has 6 children they will actually take home just under 50c less than they would if they were not on the scheme.
http://www.thejournal.ie/gateway-scheme-parents-1358662-Mar2014/

Ok, maybe PRSI is not formally regarded as a 'tax'.

foxy farmer

Raising funds for TT is one thing but then seeing a 12 member "commitee" ( councillors and big wigs) heading out to Canada on fact finding mission is utter waste. Junket more like.

renegademaster

foxy farmer wrote: »

Raising funds for TT is one thing but then seeing a 12 member "commitee" ( councillors and big wigs) heading out to Canada on fact finding mission is utter waste. Junket more like.

we have a lot of work to do to iron out all this bull**** as we move forward united against corruption and waste!! it's long overdue and will reap benefits for the whole country

BlatentCheek

Chinasea wrote: »

Does seem to be a certain amount still of mismanagement, farcical industrial relations, and lack of law enforcement (littering for example.)

Inner city Dublin is absolutely filthy from fly tipping, yet nothing being done to address or proactively enforce numerous idle empty laws.

Dun Laoghaire has had countless public bins removed allegedly due to lack of resources, yet many countries, a lot poorer than Ireland can supply and service basic amenities like a few bloo*y public litter bins.

I think it varies between different local authorities.

I have to work with a few and some are beyond a joke, literally engineers would stop answering your calls and emails for weeks on end to avoid having to do their job, while others are actually quite good, and most fall between the two. I've noticed that Kilkenny and Fingal for example seem quite well run.

The crap ones seem to blame any inefficiency on having a unionised workforce which is at best half true, as the well-functioning local authorities face the exact same problem. It's much more a problem of management in my opinion. Isn't there one in the north west that has a chief executive who earns more than the Spanish prime minister?

Micky Dolenz

You could say the same about any volunteer organisation. If everyone went "Shur, the government should be doing it" there would be feck all done.

foxy farmer

One of the best tidy town efforts I've seen was closing a section of the N71 between Innishannon and Bandon for a day a few years ago. Its a nice scenic drive along the Bandon river but had been destroyed by littering from passing traffic. Both towns sent out teams to clean the roadsides eventually meeting up along the route. The result was astonishing. No fear the CC could have done that in a day.
Of course if people didn't toss rubbish out car windows there'd be no need for this type of action.

artful_codger

It's not just tidy towns doing the Councils work. Local business are also landscaping roundabouts and green patches, with a little sign to make sure you know. I'm waiting for McDonalds to start fixing the potholes.

Sunny Dayz

Last year or year before, local tidy town committee planted daffodil bulbs on the approaches into the town and they came up lovely. Council workers went out with their lawn mowers and cut them all down!

MadsL

If people were shamed by their littering activities maybe less 'tidying' would be needed.

I propose licensing volunteer litter wardens with the power to issue on the spot fines for littering, let them retain 80% of the revenue they generate in fines.

Name and shame those issued fines in the local press.