A packed meeting
of residents of the greater Ballinfoile locality and of Castlegar this week in the Menlo Park hotel heard speaker
and speaker stress the importance of ensuring that the new Neighbourhood Sports
and Community Centre must serve and be controlled by local people. It was
standing room only on Monday in the Menlo Park Hotel as residents finally could
see decades of campaigning bear fruit with the much anticipated
state-of-the-art centre being readied for opening.
However there was
a strong fear expressed that, due to the severe cutbacks in local government
funding resulting in Galway City Council not being able to operate the centre
on its own and having to consider bringing in a private management company,
that profits could be proritised at the expense of community needs.
There was
unanimous agreement by the capacity crowd that the council should not take on
an outside contractor until the principles of community representativity on an
oversight board, peak hours retention and
low rental fees for local groups are formally agreed upon with residents
of the area. Furthermore it was also agreed that the local authority should
consider social enterprise partnership programmes as an alternative to private
contractors. The council will discuss the management and operations of the
Ballinfoile Castlegar Neighbourhood Centre at its meeting of December 14th
and we want them to ensure that decades of campaigning and levies imposed on
houses built since 1978 to fund local recreational facilities are not betrayed
by the community now losing control of its new facility.
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