COMMUNITY NEWS
Your Councillors say... Firstly we have to mention the referendum. People in Bristol have voted to have a committee system rather than a Mayor. Whatever your views, that has been decided. What we need to do now is to work out exactly what that means and how we involve citizens in democratic decisions. Crucially it means working across parties. Jude, Amirah and Tim continue to work well together locally and will certainly take this into the wider council work. Second thing to mention is the cost of living crisis. Most importantly we would like to make sure everyone has applied for their council tax rebate. If you pay by direct debit you should have already got it. If not apply here: https://www.bristol.gov.uk/council-tax/ council-tax-rebate Remember you can still claim even if you get 100% council tax rebate.
Onto local matters, a few things we should mention. Firstly we have been working on the ‘Slow the Smoke’ project in Ashley where local residents have been monitoring air quality. Its been getting some national press coverage and initial results clearly show a spike in particle pollution above EU levels on cold, still days when people burn fuel. The cost of energy is sky rocketing and some people have no other choice but it does raise that people who can should think about solid fuel. Couple of other things we have been doing include working with officers and local businesses to co-ordinate some action on graffiti on the Ashley Hill and Stokes Croft Junction and we hope that will improve soon. We have also been working with local residents and Bristol waste to set up pilots where resident will manually weed streets meaning they don’t need to be sprayed. If it works, hopefully we can roll it out. And finally, it is the time of year again when Community Infrastructure Levy money is available. This is money that developers pay to the council that is for community use. Not much was built in Covid so there is much less in the pot but bids include various traffic calming, developing Dalrymple park, making Narroways more accessible. Please get in touch with us if you have more views. A quick mention to Jon Newey from Docklands Centre who has helped in publicising the CIL process. He is leaving for pastures new and we thank him for all the work he has done in the area Your councillors Tim, Jude and Amirah.
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