Search Results for 'Mark Winters'

Fianna Fáil Ballina town councillor Johnny O’Malley rejected claims that he was playing politics this week at a meeting of Ballina Town Council.

Fresh from celebrating the election of Michelle Mulherin to the Dáil the members of the Ballina district of the Fine Gael party will have to get voting again very soon. Because of her election, the party now has vacancies to fill on both Mayo County Council and Ballina Town Council. Ordinarily a vacant seat is filled by co-opting a Fine Gael candidate who missed out on getting elected to the county council last time. However the Fine Gael vote managment in the 2009 local elections was so good that all their candidates in the Ballina electoral area were elected to the county council.

Ballina Town Council has agreed to give €5,000 funding towards the Ballina St Patrick’s Day Parade this year. “Without the support of this council the parade would struggle to exist,” Cllr Johnny O’Malley told the meeting. “Over the past number of years with the support of this council we have turned it into one of the bet parades in the country.”

Fine Gael Ballina Town councillor Mark Winters demanded answers why a motion he submitted to the town council to change the standing orders of the meetings to include an item called either engineers report or questions was ruled not valid by the council.

The last round of games in the local stages of the FAI Umbro Junior Cup are down for decision on Sunday all over the county. With four games down for decision, there are a number of interesting contests to whet the appetite of the soccer supporter. The big game of the day is the meeting of Iorras Aontaithe and Ballina Town in Carnenash at 2pm. Ballina Town picked up their second Super League title in a row in the autumn and will be looking to make a splash in this competition.

The members of Ballina Town Council agreed a date for what promises to be a very difficult budget for the local authority for next year this week.

The Ballina Town Council is to rename Pearse Street in the town to iStreet for a day as part of the town’s effort to win €50,000 worth of advertising in a competition a radio station is running. Fine Gael Councillor Mark Winters proposed the idea at the meeting of the town council on Wednesday night as the elected members discussed the renovations of the street which will be completed early next month. Cllr Winters told the meeting that “ iRadio are running a competition where they are giving away €50,000 worth of advertising for a town, where the best dressed shop with an iRadio theme would win €10,000 for themselves and another €40,000 for the promotion of the town. Winning a prize like this would be a huge boost for the town in promoting itself and the station is aimed at the 16 to 35-year-old market who are the big consumers of goods and services, and this kind of advertising could only be a boost to the town.” His proposal was seconded by Cllr Barry McLoughlin.

The Ballina Town Council agreed to give Ballina Chamber €20,000 for the promotion of the town at the monthly meeting of the council this week, but the decision did lead to some heated debate in the council chamber. Ballina Chamber had initially made the application a number of months ago, but the decision was held off after some of the members of the council expressed their concerns that they would not be included in the decision of where the money would be spent, and requested the chamber to report back to them as to what exactly the €20,000 would be spent on. Before the debate began, Mayor Mary Kelly told the meeting that she believed that Cllr Mark Winters should excuse himself from the chamber for the item because he is the secretary of the chamber, Cllr Winters objected to this telling the meeting that he was there as a councillor and that his position in the chamber was a voluntary one, and he was not getting paid for his work with the chamber. Town clerk Carmel Murphy agreed that Cllr Winter would not have a conflict of interest as he was a member of a voluntary organisation and not a paid staff member.

The 2010 road works programme for the Ballina area was welcomed by the members of Ballina Town Council this week.

Ballina Town Council stayed within the expected budgetary spending in the first two months of the year the elected members were told this week. At the local authority’s annual budget meeting the members had requested to be updated on a quarterly basis of the income and outgoing of the council. Town clerk Carmel Murphy gave the members their first update this week. Ms Murphy told the members that up to the end of February this year the council had spent €660,129 which equates to 10.31 per cent of the total budget for the year. She went on to tell the members that the total income for the council for the first two months of the year was €715,587 or 11.17 per cent of the budgeted income for the year. Both income and expenditure were in line with what was planned for in the budget. However she warned the members that managing the finances of the council will require constant vigilance and the realisation of the council’s income will be critical in the coming months to ensure the council stays in budget.