Improvements in the Willow Park area of Athlone are coming along well, councillors were told at this months’s town council meeting, in reply to two separate queries.
Both Mayor Sheila Buckley Byrne and Cllr Alan Shaw had sought updates on the investment programme which was approved by the council at its meeting last May for the Kilmacoo super-estate.
Director of services for the town, Barry Kehoe, was happy to inform them that, to date: “the community facility was up and running and the green space was on the way” and that the long-awaited covering of the open drain at the back of this green area had finally been carried out.
Mayor Buckley Byrne said residents welcomed the closure of this particular hazard.
He also informed the meeting that notices under the Derelict Sites Act had been issued against the registered owners of a number of such eyesores around the neighbourhood impelling them to tidy them up, and that the upgrading of the street lighting had been completed.
Significantly, Mr Kehoe revealed that a contractor had been procured to fence off the edge of the estate from neighbouring farmland, and that negotiations with this landowner with regards to a contribution towards the fencing was “ongoing”.
“It [the fencing] will benefit him substantially with regard to illegal dumping,” siad Mr Kehoe.
Already last year, the residents saw the successful re-location of the playground to Norwood Court beside the community house as “an accceptable revision”.
The only perceived failure on the councils’s behalf from all the submissions received on the Willow Park/Meadowbrook Pan - the erection of a CCTV system - was outside its power, and can only be put up by the Department of Justice. An application has been made to the Minister.
Further improvements to footpaths and parking facilities will be completed in the coming year.
“The council is continuing to liaise with Goverment departments to secure additional resources, particularly towards community facilities,” he concluded.
