This article is from page 10 of the 2013-05-21 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 10 JPG
KILRUSH Town Council’s finances are the healthiest in years and its soon to be disbanded council is determined to have all of the money spent on local projects before it is absorbed “ and lost” within a newly amalgamated county council.
According to the Financial Statement for last year, and published this week, there was an overall net surplus of € 19, 535 at the end of 2012, and € 200,000 transferred to specially marked projects.
This is no small feat considering that at the end of 2007, there was a cumulative deficit of € 187,000 in the council’s revenue account.
According to Town Clerk John Corry the savings were achieved by cuts to expenditure in different sectors including payroll, and despite cuts to the Local Government Fund and grants from the Department of Environment, Community and Local Government.
At Thursday night’s meeting of the town council it was agreed to set aside € 150,000 of the € 200,000 transferred to special projects to the proposed Cooraclare Road Sports Development with the remaining € 50,000 to go towards that Vande leur Walled Garden Capital Works Project.
The council is currently awaiting grant-funding approval from central government for the sport’s development before the project can go through. Grant funding has been refused for the project on two successive years, leading to the mayor Cllr Mairead O’Brien (Ind) having some reservations about setting aside such a large sum.
She pointed out that if the project does not get a sports grant this year, it will be put on the shelf and the money set-aside by the town council absorbed by the larger council.
“Can we set a date to say if it is not achieved can we say it will be used for astro turf pitch?” she asked.
It was agreed that if funding was not provided in the next round of sport capital grants, the funding would be transferred to another project. It was also agreed to tender for the astro turf pitch so that the council could move quickly to have this project carried out quickly, if the sport development did not get the green light.
Meanwhile the council finances were further boosted by local businesses compliance with paying commercial rates. At 76 per cent compliance for the third year in a row this is the highest return to any of Clare’s three rate setting councils, including the county council. Mr Corry said that every effort would be made to collect all outstanding rates.
“We are being as flexible as we can with rate payers, and going down the legal route is a last resort,” he said.
Development contributions were down again this year to € 2,153 from an all time high in 2007 of € 273,096.