Santa needs more socks!
Nimble fingered residents are being asked to join in the Santa’s Socks appeal and create Christmas stockings which will be filled with sweets and passed to food banks in York and to local charity IDAS (the Independent Domestic Abuse Service) for distribution to their clients.
The Santa’s Socks initiative is a community arts project organised by the council’s York Learning team, encouraging groups and individuals to make stockings which, once filled, will be donated to local families and children. Residents are invited to sew, knit, crochet, felt, quilt or embroider their stockings.
Councillor Nigel Ayre, Executive Member for Culture, Leisure and Tourism said: “Last year residents, craft groups, knitting circles and other organisations all set to work and generously produced over 400 amazing Christmas Stockings and we hope that even more will be created this year. They were greatly appreciated and we hope that residents will again have fun supporting the initiative for a very worthwhile cause.”
Each stocking should measure approximately 40cm long and 25cm wide. The shape may be inspired by classic stockings, Victorian or elf boots or any other Christmassy stocking shape. Templates are available online.
All socks should be completed by Wednesday 25 November and when finished contact santassocks@york.gov.uk or Claire Douglas, York Learning on 07990 774420. Photos of completed socks or work in progress will be shared on York Learning’s facebook and twitter sites to inspire others. Finished Santa Socks can be handed in to City of York Council, West Offices or any library.
Santa’s Socks is one of many York Learning community arts projects, which this year has included the mass portrait project, Face of York, a mosaic arts project at Acomb Explore and a family learning project discovering more about the past and present at Lidgett Grove Methodist Church.
Quango policing group publishes agenda for Monday meeting
The “Make it York” shareholders committee has finally published the agenda for its meeting on Monday.
That is only two working days before the meeting is due to start.
It gives residents who want to address the meeting only 24 hours to register to speak.
Supporters of retaining the Christmas carousel ride in Parliament Street were hoping to make their case to the panel of 5 Councillors although the short notice may deter them (they will be making representation to the full council meeting later in the week anyway)
There are only two items on the agenda.
Performance out-turn April to September 2015 click to enlarge
Financial figures show income £82,000 below budget in the period up to July.
Expenditure is lower so the company was in balance at that early stage of the year. The out turn disguises a significant shortfall in Shambles market rent payments.
The second item relates to performance against target.
The Council continues to be sharply critcised for failing to set KPIs for the events programme and the Shambles Market activities that MIY now supervises.
In any event, most of the first quarter indicators are blank. Even the traditional tourism monitors are largely missing.
So will the committee see through the prevarication and challenge the arrogant way that this organisation has gone about its business since April?
We will wait and see.
Christmas children’s carousel petition tops 2000 signatures
York Christmas Carousel
A petition, asking for York’s traditional Christmas Carousel ride to be retained in St Sampsons Square, has gained the support of over 2000 people.
It will be formally handed over to the York Council on Friday at 2:00pm (West Offices).
The new “Make it York” (MIT) organisation has been criticised for trying to force the ride to move onto an alternative – less accessible – site at the Eye of York.
It emerged today that senior managers at MIY have not been prepared to enter into discussions with the ride operator Warringtons over the alternative location.
It is understood that a “take it or leave” option was put forward in August but that there has been no subsequent negotiation
An electronic version of the petition can still be signed. Click here to access it.
NB A response to a Freedom Of Information probe into the objectives set for the – wholly Council owned – “Make it York” organisation is expected to be published later this week.
Carousel petition gathers 500 signatures in one week
A petition, in support of retaining children’s rides in St Sampson’s Square at Christmas, has attracted 500 signatures.
This petition will be available to sign for another week.
The paper based petition, which can be signed at the Carousel, supplements the Epetition which can be found on the Councils web site, and which will be available for another 3 weeks.
It is hoped it will persuade the Council and “Make It York” to change their plans to allocate the children’s site to another – alcohol based – “festive attraction”.
“Save the Parliament Street Christmas Carousel” petition
Now “live” on the Council’s web site
Click here to sign
Members of the public ride a carousel adjacent to the ‘St Nicholas Fair’ Christmas market in the city centre of York, Northern England on December 3, 2014. AFP PHOTO / OLI SCARFF (Photo credit should read OLI SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images)
Make it York, Parliament Street & the Carousel
Anyone wishing to sign a petition asking the York Council and “Make it York” to ensure that traditional children’s Christmas rides remain available in the Parliament Street area should click here
Members of the public ride a carousel adjacent to the ‘St Nicholas Fair’ Christmas market in the city centre of York, Northern England on December 3, 2014. AFP PHOTO / OLI SCARFF (Photo credit should read OLI SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images)
The petition asks the York Council and MIY to:
Take action to ensure that any major changes initiated by “Make it York” or other Quangos operating in the City are subject to consultation with residents. In particular we petition that the traditional children’s rides, provided during the period leading up to Christmas, be retained on either Parliament Street or St. Sampson’s Square, unless an alternative location, which is both acceptable to the operators and equally accessible for users, can be found.
Background
“Make it York”, a company wholly owned by the Council but run by an independent Board of Directors, has announced that the children’s rides traditionally provided during the St. Nicholas Fair period leading up to Christmas, will not be allocated a pitch in the Parliament Street area this year.
This ban includes the iconic Carousel ride.
The space may be used to accommodate a licensed bar.
No consultation with residents or most Councillors has taken place, no effective public scrutiny process for “Make it York” decisions has been introduced nor have any performance measures – for the public events that it may organise – been published.
York Council taxpayers need to be involved in the decision making processes for organisations that they help to fund including “Make it York”, the “York Museums Trust” & the York Libraries and Archives Mutual Company.
The petition should also be available on the Council’s web site shortly
York children set to lose Christmas Carousel?
Members of the public ride a carousel adjacent to the ‘St Nicholas Fair’ Christmas market in the city centre of York, on December 3, 2014. OLI SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images
It looks like the new “Make it York” organisation is set to ban a famous childrens ride from the St Sampsons Square/Parliament Street area this Christmas. The festive music from the ride has added to the atmosphere in that part of the City.
A carousel ride has been a popular choice for hundreds of young (and not so young) children for a long time but we understand that their booking for a traditional pitch on St Sampson’s Square has been cancelled by “Make it York”
Instead more market stalls are to provided in the Square with a “new attraction” likely to go outside Marks and Spencer.
Make it York have offered the carousel operators a pitch in the Eye of York, apparently unaware that the Ice Factor event was forced to move from there following complaints, of noise and distracting behaviour, from officials at the adjacent County Court. The site would in any event not have a high enough footfall to justify installation and running costs.
There has been no discussions with Councillors over the move.
While many residents would welcome some consultation on what new attractions might be provided in the future during the Christmas and other seasons, it seems that the new organisation has yet to learn the importance of consultation with potential customers.
It is only a few weeks since that the organisation announced that it was removing the fountain in Parliament Street, ostensibly again to provide more space for specialist stalls. The York Council later intervened and shelved the idea pending proper public consultation.
Make it York took over tourist promotion, economic development, the management of the Shambles (Newgate) market and city centre activities in April. The transfer of responsibilities – and a large budget – was criticised at the time for are lack of transparency, poor communications, lack of consultation and inadequate no performance measures.
The Council is represented on the make it York Board by its Leader Cllr Chris Steward
Plans to boost Winter Recycling Collections
Plans to empty Green Bins on two additional occasions this winter will be considered on 10th August.
An officer report outlines options to either
- have two additional green waste collections in November or
- one additional collection in November with one additional collection in January.
Last year the then Labour led Council was heavily criticised for ending green bin emptying at the end of October. Only a by election win for the Liberal Democrats in the Westfield ward prompted the newly balanced Council to add in an additional collection in January.
The published report fails to indicate how much green waste was collected during this January collection which was also intended to pick up discarded Christmas trees.
Nor is any weekly collection volume data is included.
The same meeting will confirm bin emptying arrangements for the Christmas period. The paper includes plans to improve recycling collections by reducing from four weeks to three weeks the maximum time that people would need to wait between collections.
Roughly half the city missed one recycling collection during the Christmas period last year and so had to wait 4 weeks between collections.
The Council have yet to publish details of any pre decision all party discussion meeting. In the absence of such a meeting residents will be able to make representations at the meeting on 10th and also to make written representations.
Keep smiling
