Council and DfI lock horns over urban and rural maintenance

THE council chamber burst into fiery debate at their last sitting when the ‘bread-and-butter’ subject of bin collections, roundabout maintenance and verge-cutting were brought up for discussion.

The bluster began when Cllr Mark Ovens made the point that a number of bin-routes in the Fermanagh and Omagh District area are being missed by the local waste disposal team.

He said that he had learned through conversations with council staff that some waste and recycling personnel have recently been made feel threatened by residents who are frustrated that their bins are not being consistently collected.

However, whatever his intentions, Cllr Ovens was swiftly reprimanded by chief executive, Alison McCullough who said communication of this kind between councillors and staff is strictly forbidden, as set out in the relevant rules governing such matters.

The debate then turned to the issue of maintaining the flowers and planting on local roundabouts, which the chief executive quickly asserted was not the council’s responsibility, but fell at the feet of the Department of Infrastructure.

Making her point, she asked, “Why would we be paying our money to a third party organisation (to do this job)?

“It is somewhat perverse that we would be maintaining the properties of other individuals as opposed (to those belonging) to the council itself.”

Overgrown grass

Finally, the debate turned to the threat posed by overgrown grass blocking important sight lines on local roads.

Cllr Sheamus Greene said,”The roundabouts might be a bit unsightly, but I would rather for the last half hour that we had talked about something that is really dangerous at the moment, which is the sight lines at local junctions where the grass hasn’t been cut.

“It would be far better that we write to the roads service to get all the sight lines to our rural junctions cut, because there are people that are two or three foot out on the road before they can see if there is anything coming or not.

“At this time of the year, we get these complaints, and we always seem to leave it a couple of weeks too late, until these junctions become really dangerous. At some stage, unfortunately, somebody will get badly injured or killed.”

A series of proposals were passed, including one from local Omagh town councillor Barry McElduff, who suggested that communication is made to find out exactly what the division of responsibility is between DfI and the council.

“(The respective roles of council and DfI) are very blurred in the minds of people, but it is not really blurred. I think DfI roads are hiding from people. You are not allowed to say that, but they are hiding and putting us out front as if we are the ones to contact. DfI are willfully hiding and not treating councillors very respectfully, when they are just raising issues of the common good.

“See when someone says to you that you are passing the buck, that is not the issue at all. It is all about whose statutory responsibility. And if it is DfI’s statutory responsibility, it is not ours.”

Concluding, Cllr Errol Thompson said that the roundabouts must be sorted quickly and effectively, particularly with the tourist season beginning to bloom.

“Omagh Show is coming up very shortly, and this is one of the issues that we are getting representations made to us. DfI need to get their act together. There was some work carried out by volunteers on the Swinging Bars Roundabout, and they just removed the weeds, but it made it look a lot better.”