There were no surprises in the budget unanimously passed by Athlone’s local reps this week.
It follows momentous changes to the budget programme following the Minister for Environment’s decision to establish Irish Water, impose the local property tax and eliminate Athlone Town Council.
Some €10,161,595 was distributed between the key areas of housing, roads, amenity, development, environmental, and management for the year to come.
An extra €250,000 will be spent on housing, mostly through the Rental Accommodation Scheme for local authority tenants, though there are also increases in the maintenance budget.
It is expected that rents due to the council will fall by almost 1 per cent and at the moment local authority tenants pay an average rent of €44 per week.
Local property tax this year on the council’s 503 units of housing stock will cost €45, 270, or €90 per unit.
The total roads budget comes in at €1.55m, €218,000 less than last year, mainly due to the completion of the Westside Street Enhancement project.
However, the roads maintenance budget remains the same as last year.
There will be €10,000 less spent on public lighting and €12,000 less spent on the maintenance of public car parks.
The development budget, which caters for festivals, tourism, and promotion is down by almost €200,000 with cuts in almost every area.
In the environmental sector, it is anticipated it will cost €22,000 less to run the fire service based on last year’s reduced usage of the service, but if this changes and the service is busier this year, extra funds will have to come from elsewhere in the overall budget to cover those costs.
There is €32,000 less to run the litter management programmes, but Tidy Towns funding comes in at a total of €110,000 in line with last year.
The big capital spending projects include €200,000 for the Civic Square at St Mary’s Church and €200,000 for the section of the square fronting the library which will be renamed John Count McCormack Square.
The €5m Garrycastle Bridge project will be completed in February and work on the €6m water mains project begins this month.
There was one small change to the draft document presented to councillors in December, with Cllr Paul Hogan successful in lobbying for an extra €5,000 for the RAPID programme.
Meadow Lane was also added to the list of unfinished housing estates to be funded this year, with €184,000 set aside for Meadow Lane, Canal Walk, Chestnut Court, and Church Wood.
Otherwise the issues raised by councillors were political rather than financial, with concerns raised about littering and dog fouling, national funding for homelessness in the county, and arts and tourism projects.
