Streetlife

I am a bit confused about this. In September in the Heritage weekend, I went on a guided tour of the gardens while the architect explained the plans to refurbish them. These included lights throughout the gardens - as there used to be. It was also my understanding that a part of the funding was to be set aside for future maintenance. Does anybody have any information about that? But the future looks good, in my opinion. Trouble is that a lot of people just don't understand how dire our financial situation as a country is, and part of the problem is a loss of self reliance and sorting out things for ourselves (and that is not aimed at you, Nick).

You may well be right Mike.  But if the refurbishment includes on-going maintenance and lights, that seems to be a bit at odds with the rest of the seafront being deemed as unnecessary spending and subject to cuts. 

I know we are under huge pressure financially (I know for myself all too well), but I think I was trying to understand the balance between spending £2.5 million (only £250k on plants) of Lottery funding on the Spa Gardens (minus the theatre), whilst saving £10,000 a year by not funding seafront gardens planting.

To me, that smacks totally of making a big political point that will hurt local people and affect tourism over a paltry sum of money.  I also don't actually get where the lights on the front can cost £14,000 a year (which FTC are now preparing to fund).  It is only an on-going maintenance job with replacing the odd bulb here and there (aren't they now all LED bulbs?)

I just see things as they are presented and don't offer a party politics point of view at all.

In 34 years of living in Felixstowe I have seen so many hundreds of thousands wasted on so called 'consultants'. I have seen 30 years of lost income from the beach hut removal from the South Seafront (now at last seeing the building works promised 30 years ago).  Lack of investment in the Spa Pavilion.  Need I go on?

So a lot of the financial state that SCDC is in is, in my humble opinion, self inflicted.

It's a topsy-turvy World.

(I am sure I am going to get some grief on this post.  Brace!!)

Oh.... and just for the record.... before anyone says to me 'get elected and do something from the inside', I did in 1995.  I had 4 years on Felixstowe Town Council.  I worked hard in my tenure for local issues, but fighting SCDC with their own agendas is like fighting fog.

No grief from me. They're very good points and I am sure correct. When I was first thinking of moving here about 1997 I looked at a house in Manor Terrace but decided against it because of the imminent development! My general point is I suppose party political but also more general and it is the economic situation in Europe and America. We're all broke.

Well said, Nick . .