Taxi rank changes in county town
Castlebar Town Council last week approved a number of changes to the positioning of taxi ranks in the town. There had been a proposal from Cllr Michael Kilcoyne at the request of Cllr Frank Durcan, who was unable to attend the meeting, to postpone the decision on the issue until the next meeting of the council. This was backed by Cllr Brendan Henaghan, but the other members voted against the postponement. The new measures will see only three taxi spaces at the top of Main Street on the left hand in operation during the day, down from seven at present. A 16-space night time rank will come into operation on the right hand side of the street stretching from outside the Upper Crust to the Costcutters shop on the street. There will also be two 10-minute parking spaces put in on Bridge Street outside XtraVision where there is currently a taxi rank coming into being. It is hoped this will stop the build up of taxis in this area which stretched around onto Linenhall Street during busy times. There will also be additional taxi spaces put in on Hopkins Road outside Dunne’s Stores and more put in the Market Square car park.
Council urged to take over Glenfort and Viewpoint estates
Two councillors put forward motions for Castlebar Town Council to take over Glenfort and Viewpoint estates at the September meeting of Castlebar Town Council. Cllr Therese Ruane and Cllr Harry Barrett both spoke of the urgent need for these estates to be taken over and completed properly. The meeting was told that the council had received a plebiscite from the residents which was being gone through by the council in relation to this and that in recent weeks some work had been done by the developer in relation to cleaning up unfinished aspects of the estate and some vacant sited that were never built on. Town manager Seamus Granahan told the meeting that the council exhaust every single avenue they can to get a developer to finish the work before the takeover is completed and continue to do so. Town engineer Sean Higgins told the meeting that, while works had started to be carried out recently, he would not defend the developer for the length of time it had taken. Cllr Ruane also informed the council that a delegation of residents would be attending the October meeting of the council to give the members a report on the work that had been carried out and work outstanding.
Councillors agree to changes to development plan under core strategy
The members of Castlebar Town Council last week approved a variation to the town development plan to comply with the new core development strategy being implemented by central Government. The elected members held a workshop session with council management and planners on the proposed changes and had all the substantive issues on the variation agreed beforehand. The variation will see areas that have been zoned for residential development changed to phased zoning rather than have lands dezoned. There will be three different phases of zoned lands, with the second phase coming into play once the 70 per cent of the lands in the first phase have been completed. However all lands that currently have planning permission on them, no matter which zone they are in, will still retain that permission for the length of time the permission was granted for.
