Today I attended the Kildare Newbridge Municipal District meeting for September in Kildare County Council. Allenwood Playground was on the agenda, along with some other local issues.
The update for Allenwood playground mentioned the current design phase as I wrote about at Architect selected for Allenwood Playground. A proposed playground in Robertstown was also mentioned and this will be considered as part of a larger plan for some community land which is being led by the Robertstown Community Amenities Association (See https://www.facebook.com/robertstowncaa).
The progress report also provides an update on the proposed project to update the cobblestone pathway in Kilmeague. It notes that the support of the community will be necessary for this to go ahead. Cllr. Mark Stafford had several questions relating to proposed improvements in Kilmeague and Coill Dubh. He asked the council to consider installing signs in Coill Dubh to make it easier to find a particular residence.
I was disappointed to witness three councillors leave the meeting after about ten minutes to go to a protest up in Dublin. We elected these representatives to represent us in these meetings and to work with the council on the issues affecting our community. I don’t think any of us voted for our public representatives to go and protest on our behalf in Dublin. Given that there was no MD meeting in August, it will now be two months without these councillors having had any input into local matters at the official meetings.
Having recently attended the Maynooth MD meeting, it was a good opportunity to compare the two districts. I found the Maynooth MD to be a very productive meeting with a cooperative atmosphere and a team of councillors working together for the people. Kildare Newbridge MD, on the other hand, has a minority of uncooperative councillors that focus on disrupting the business of the committee. Some of them were asking questions relating to procedures that one would have expected them to ask at the beginning of the council term. As there is a limit to the number of questions that a councillor can ask, it seems extremely wasteful to be focusing questions on this type of stuff when there are a lot of local issues that need to be progressed.
As I wrote about in Rural Interests at Maynooth Area MD Meeting, it is difficult for the rural areas to get the necessary focus in a district that includes large towns, such as Newbridge and Kildare. This becomes even more difficult when councillors from the towns are asking irrelevant questions that are unrelated to local matters. The moving of Kilmeague and surrounding areas into the Clane local electoral area will be good for the region.
