North Down Community Blogs

You'd be surprised what you can achieve by Stepping Forward and making your voice heard. This year you have two opportunities to Step Forward with Alliance: in the European and the Council Elections. They are both on May 22 - so Step Forward with me and together we can make great things happen....

We've seen how the building of unnecessary new council buildings can become expensive White Elephants that we as ratepayers have to underwrite for many, many years. In Newtownabbey a £12million new Council building is unnecessary. And in Antrim the £7 million Council building is a financial burden for the people of the area. And already we have had many calls for a new Council buildings for the North Down & Ards Council even while we have two excellent facilities in Newtownards and Bangor. Over the coming months we'll hear lots of reasons why we need a brand new building. Some people have already suggested the mad idea of building it on Queen's Parade site. But I don't think we need one at all and I will fight against one being built to protect your rates with every opportunity I have. So here's my plan. Locate the main Council office in either of...

The election of the new super Council in May give us a brilliant opportunity as a community to include young and old residents alongside business in the decision making processes across North Down and Ards in the future: Community Forums. If we can convince the new Council to listen to what organised groups of citizens have to say, and involve them in the decision-making processes of Council, then we really can work together to create a new shared society for all of us. And it's not only fairly easy to do, but is an imperative of the new Council to involve community groups. So, how do we do it? Well, business has already made a start by organising itself into a Business Forum for Bangor and Holywood with plans to invite participation from Newtownards and Donaghadee etcetera after the election. Older residents can use existing organisations like AGENI to begin to...