Parish Commissioners to merge?

[Non-Believer 12,354]

13 minutes ago, Declan said:

Well the facilities of the village centre. Rushen don't have a shopping centre so their residents drive into Port Erin. So the cleaning of the town centre, maintenance of carparks, plus cleaning up after their dogs when they walk them in Bradda or along the Prom.

Rushen is Port Erin and PSM plus assorted hamlets for Tynwald, Church purposes until PSM school opened they went to the same primary school, the football team is Rushen United. It's one community but the Rushen Commissioners want to be subsidised by the rest of the community. 

But does what PE have to offer justify the huge discrepancy in rates charged compared to Rushen? There's next to FA in PE. Does the cleaning of the town centre and the emptying of a handful of doggy bins really take the vast difference in rates charged?

What's the score with refuse collection? Is Rushen fortnightly and PE weekly?

The whole area, PE, PSM, Rushen and Arbory fall under a municipal hankerchief. There's no justification for the huge differences. Find out why PE's rates are so expensive. Amalgamate the lot, streamline the services and set a fair rate accordingly.

Edited July 17, 2019 by Non-Believer
Typo

[Declan 7,173]

To add to the absurdity, to go from one end of Rushen Commissioners area you have to go through Port Erin or Port St Mary. 

[foxdaleliberationfront 595]

2 hours ago, Non-Believer said:

But does what PE have to offer justify the huge discrepancy in rates charged compared to Rushen? There's next to FA in PE. Does the cleaning of the town centre and the emptying of a handful of doggy bins really take the vast difference in rates charged?

What's the score with refuse collection? Is Rushen fortnightly and PE weekly?

The whole area, PE, PSM, Rushen and Arbory fall under a municipal hankerchief. There's no justification for the huge differences. Find out why PE's rates are so expensive. Amalgamate the lot, streamline the services and set a fair rate accordingly.

Port Erin will also be in receipt of all the business rates for the area where as Rushen has next to no business rate income. So the costs in Port Erin should be more than offset by that... but they're not. 

[Kopek 2,091]

5 hours ago, Declan said:

To add to the absurdity, to go from one end of Rushen Commissioners area you have to go through Port Erin or Port St Mary. 

So really, Rushen should takeover PE and PSM?  

[Roger Mexico 9,267]

5 hours ago, Kopek said:

So really, Rushen should takeover PE and PSM?  

Bizarrely that is exactly what they are trying to do.  Well part of Port Erin anyway.

About three years ago[1], Port Erin Commissioners had put in a boundary extension to take over the half of the newly-built Ballakilley housing estate that wasn't already within the Village boundary.  At the usual glacial speed it wound its way through the bureaucracy, went out to consultation and was recommended to be approved, which it should have been formally at this month's Tynwald.

However the inhabitants of the half of the estate still in Rushen were moaning because they wanted to have the advantages of effectively living in Port Erin, but paying Rushen rates.  And Rushen presumably liked the extra rateable value it provided.  So at the last minute Rushen Commissioners put in an application to extend their boundary to include the Port Erin half of the estate instead.   Rather than telling them to piss off, this seems to have completely flummoxed the DoI (because let's face it, what doesn't) and they withdrew the item instead, so it won't be sorted till at least October.

 

[1]  In fact when Phil Gawne was still the Minister.  He actually lives in Rushen Parish though the constituency boundaries were drawn to include his house in Arbory, Castletown and Malew.

[manxy 1,476]

On 7/15/2019 at 12:01 PM, Neil Down said:

Everything south of Douglas - 1 office

Douglas and everything north of Douglas - 1 office

Just two sets of commissioners required (or not as the case may be)

Now all we have to do is reduce the number of MHK's and MLC's and we'll be quids in. UK MP's look after 80,000 people on average which is nearly the amount on the island. Doesn't make financial sense and you could cut that by a third easily without losing any sleep. 

[Derek Flint 4,029]

The continuation of the parish commissioners system is well overdue for review. It makes no sense having the level of micropolitics that exist for a dispersed village of 80,000 people. 

These entities all have a cost, and savings can be made by their dissolution. 

[P.K. 5,089]

34 minutes ago, Derek Flint said:

The continuation of the parish commissioners system is well overdue for review. It makes no sense having the level of micropolitics that exist for a dispersed village of 80,000 people. 

These entities all have a cost, and savings can be made by their dissolution. 

That would be fine if those dispersed villages were similar. But they're not.

Case in point just think about how the PSM upper prom looks. There are a few out of place maisonettes at the Balqueen end I grant you.

Compare that to just how awful PE looks in comparison.

I know there is a reason for that but they're like chalk and cheese and barely a mile apart....

[Uhtred 9,887]

48 minutes ago, Derek Flint said:

The continuation of the parish commissioners system is well overdue for review. It makes no sense having the level of micropolitics that exist for a dispersed village of 80,000 people. 

These entities all have a cost, and savings can be made by their dissolution. 

MHKs are too fearful to advance local government reform because they anticipate (correctly) that the parishes would whip up the natives in a campaign to unseat said MHKs. It’s also a little difficult to sell the argument that bigger is better when the illustration of bigger is central government itself, packed with high achievers like Cregeen, Boot and Harmer...not.

Back in the 1990s when (admittedly not the most respected politician) Hovis Brown was Local Government Minister he proposed a plan for about 5 regional authorities, one being Douglas, which was entirely logical. Naturally the rural MHKs made sure that was buried in double quick time - I think it was voted on in Tynwald and defeated.

[Declan 7,173]

1 hour ago, P.K. said:

That would be fine if those dispersed villages were similar. But they're not.

Case in point just think about how the PSM upper prom looks. There are a few out of place maisonettes at the Balqueen end I grant you.

Compare that to just how awful PE looks in comparison.

I know there is a reason for that but they're like chalk and cheese and barely a mile apart....

Yeah, but Port St Mary Prom has always been nicer than Port Erin's. 

[Non-Believer 12,354]

1 hour ago, Uhtred said:

MHKs are too fearful to advance local government reform because they anticipate (correctly) that the parishes would whip up the natives in a campaign to unseat said MHKs. It’s also a little difficult to sell the argument that bigger is better when the illustration of bigger is central government itself, packed with high achievers like Cregeen, Boot and Harmer...not.

Back in the 1990s when (admittedly not the most respected politician) Hovis Brown was Local Government Minister he proposed a plan for about 5 regional authorities, one being Douglas, which was entirely logical. Naturally the rural MHKs made sure that was buried in double quick time - I think it was voted on in Tynwald and defeated.

It's an easy meat argument for the smaller LA's to put forward for the defence of their status quo too though when you've the likes of PE next door to Rushen with rates of umpteen times as much. That raises the blood pressure of ratepayers like the flick of a switch.

Nobody in the likes of Rushen for example, is going to vote for their rates to skyrocket. It's the same in the north with the likes of Lezayre vs Ramsey.

[Derek Flint 4,029]

2 hours ago, P.K. said:

That would be fine if those dispersed villages were similar. But they're not.

Case in point just think about how the PSM upper prom looks. There are a few out of place maisonettes at the Balqueen end I grant you.

Compare that to just how awful PE looks in comparison.

I know there is a reason for that but they're like chalk and cheese and barely a mile apart....

That is because they have been allowed to perpetuate a parish pump system that was out of date by the 1950's There will be different villages in wide tracts of Scotland, but they don't all have their own micro-feifdom. 

[Derek Flint 4,029]

2 hours ago, Uhtred said:

MHKs are too fearful to advance local government reform because they anticipate (correctly) that the parishes would whip up the natives in a campaign to unseat said MHKs. It’s also a little difficult to sell the argument that bigger is better when the illustration of bigger is central government itself, packed with high achievers like Cregeen, Boot and Harmer...not.

Back in the 1990s when (admittedly not the most respected politician) Hovis Brown was Local Government Minister he proposed a plan for about 5 regional authorities, one being Douglas, which was entirely logical. Naturally the rural MHKs made sure that was buried in double quick time - I think it was voted on in Tynwald and defeated.

I don't necessarily disagree on the issues that more centralisation would bring, but there needs to be a radical reform. The question that needs to be posed is; if Whitehall said 'sort it out', what would it look like? 

[Derek Flint 4,029]

17 minutes ago, Non-Believer said:

It's an easy meat argument for the smaller LA's to put forward for the defence of their status quo too though when you've the likes of PE next door to Rushen with rates of umpteen times as much. That raises the blood pressure of ratepayers like the flick of a switch.

Nobody in the likes of Rushen for example, is going to vote for their rates to skyrocket. It's the same in the north with the likes of Lezayre vs Ramsey.

And that is why it is time for Government to 'Govern'. It takes as long for me to walk into the centre of Ramsey as someone over the 'county line', yet my rates are much, much higher. This was fine in the 50's, when people were much less mobile and you would rarely go into town. But the world has changed, and we need a much flatter system. My rates went up 10% this year. RTC either need to start cutting its cloth better, or have it tailored for them centrally. 

 

[Non-Believer 12,354]

3 minutes ago, Derek Flint said:

My rates went up 10% this year. RTC either need to start cutting its cloth better, or have it tailored for them centrally. 

 

I'm told that a number of well-respected former members of the RTC board are considering standing again at the next election. Such is their concern over matters they've seen during the present term?