Published letters on Council / City of York issues

• Creative ideas for city centre - Aug 2009

• A new pool for York - Jun 2009

• A share of the profits - Dec 2007

• Healthy Offices for the council - July 2007

• Mystery Plays Jesus and Noah were not white Yorkshiremen - June 2007

• Council tax rise of 94p per week - March 2006

Creative ideas for city centre - Aug 2009

Returning from holiday, I was delighted to read Pat Benson's letter with its creative ideas for the city centre.

It is tragic that there is not the political will to be bold in our city. If we had built an Eiffel Tower here in York, it would be five meters high, located on a car park well away from the city centre, screened by trees, and painted black to blend in with the tarmac!

It is possible to be both a beautiful historic city AND an exciting contemporary city. You only have to travel to see this is true. While we listen to medieval music in hushed rows in old buildings, towns like Monflaquin in France bring fantastic troubadors out onto the streets. While we politicians dither, other cities create exciting urban open spaces for families to enjoy.

Our rivers are underused. It took the City Screen development to show the city a new way of looking at the Ouse.

Having served as executive member for Leisure and Culture, I can assure you that there is no shortage of enthusiasm and capability at council officer level. Nor is the problem at regional development agency level. Yorkshire Forward offered over a year ago to help transform the Parliament Street/Newgate Market area, to the benefit of pedestrians and traders.

It is not all bad news. We are taking first steps to transform the lighting of the city walls. We have approved plans to transform our central library and our city archives, but while we fret over plans worth half a million pounds, Birmingham are securing over a hundred million pounds from government to build their new library.

How do they get this money? Because their plans are bold, exciting and inspirational, and because confident local politicians are one hundred percent behind them.

A new pool for York - Jun 2009

John Deighton is right to draw our attention to all the benefits of swimming [Shame of city pool prospects, June 6]. My children have all learned to swim at Edmund Wilson pool, which provides a fantastic service to families across the city.

York should have a county standard competition pool. The city’s problems regarding swimming provision predate the incoming Lib Dem administration in 2003, but that does not excuse us from taking our share of the blame. I have already apologised publicly in this paper for the mess the incoming Lib Dem administration made of the Barbican, even though I did not join the executive until 2007, four years after those decisions were taken.

I regret that in 2006 it was announced that an agreement had been reached that was expected to see a competition pool built at the university by 2011 when such no deadline had been agreed by the university. The city has not been well served by this, which is why it is right that more information is now in the public domain.

We must focus on how to turn the situation around. We must use the national desire to see more people swimming to our advantage, which is why I was happy, as executive member, to take up the opportunity to provide free swimming for under 16s and over 60s.

We must work with the Sports Minister, Sport England, the universities and others, to create a community stadium that incorporates a competition pool, as this provides us with the best opportunity to move forwards.

It is vital that our community stadium plans show real vision rather than simply being a device to provide our football and rugby clubs with a new home. I hope political leadership will turn this situation around.

A share of the profits - Dec 2007

J.Brewer is right to question why, with so many tourists and shoppers, York doesn't benefit financially. [Give us a share of the profits,11th December]

All business rates go straight to national government that does what it likes with them. For York this is a major headache.

It would be great if some of the business profits that flow from the many millions of tourists and shoppers contributed to tackling the wear to our roads and pavements and the rubbish all these welcome visitors generate. In Sweden a third of all business rates go straight to local authorities, ensuring that business and local government work together more closely than they do here, creating cleaner, more sustainable cities and communities.

On council tax, the Lib Dems have long advocated a local income tax as a fairer tax. York's council tax is one the lowest in the nation, hundreds of pounds less than in many other authorities. Government imposed caps on percentage increases hide all manner of things. £50 is 5% of £1000 but only 4% of £1250. Two neighbouring authorities can both be increasing council tax by £50 and in one city that's a 4% increase and in the other it's a 5% increase. Yet both local authorities will have to spend the same amount on: litter bins, light bulbs, paper, staff salaries, and practically anything else you care to mention.

York is slowly slipping further and further behind, with less real income available every year for all the discretionary spending that most of us would wish to see supported, eg: youth clubs, parks, libraries, care for the elderly, sport, festivals and events, and voluntary organisations. That is why I support the Fair Deal for York campaign and why I don't believe we would do ourselves any long term favours by seeking very low percentage council tax rises.

Healthy Offices for the council - July 2007

To reply to various letters about staff fitness in the new Hungate offices / swimming at Hungate.

There are many ways of promoting fitness among staff in the new offices. I have been pushing to ensure that there is adequate provision of showering facilities, for example. It is all very well having hundreds of bike racks and a Green Travel Plan, but if there are only a couple of showers it is unlikely that huge numbers of staff will be tempted to cycle more than a couple of miles to get to work. Good showering facilities also encourage staff to go out and exercise during their lunch break.

Another initiative to encourage fitness is to ensure that staff use stairs rather than lifts to get around. In far too many buildings the lifts are what you see and stairs are hidden away behind doors marked emergency exit. A design that favours stairs as the first and most obvious way of getting about, and tucks the lifts around the corner, will help tackle obesity and help hearts beat more efficiently.

Whether there is space in Hungate, or on another site close to the city centre, for swimming is something we are all comitted to exploring but what we must avoid is more dithering about the opportunity presented by the proposed public county standard competition pool at York university. It is possible to forge ahead on getting a pool created at the university AND continue to explore and progress possible city centre sites. These large projects take time to deliver. No-one can actually swim in reports, studies and consultation documents - swimming pools are what we swim in. I understand that a new pool at the university could be open in the Spring of 2010 but only if we stop dithering and start building.

Mystery Plays Jesus and Noah were not white Yorkshiremen - June 2007

Re: the Mystery Plays. The bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund includes the 'commission of a multi-cultural interpretation of the Mystery Plays for 2012'. It also proposes a production by 16-25 years olds in 2008, and a wide ranging educational programme in 2010. The multi-cultural interpretation is only one element of the bid. I am delighted to see all the work that is being done to put the plays on again in York.

It is in the nature of plays that they are interpreted by the age that puts them on. Shakespeare's plays, for example, are routinely produced in a way to make them relevant to their audience. And why not? All the most successful historical productions I have been involved with, as a composer, over the past decade have worked hard to create work that is both true to the period in which the work is set and speaks to present day issues.

That is how the original Mysteries, performed by the medieval guilds, also worked, with their Yorkshire characters and dialogue.

The most powerful expression of the Easter story I heard this year was presented by Shami Chakrabati of Liberty, on Radio 4. She compared the crucifixion of Jesus with the contemporary detention of suspects without trial and the erosion of civil liberties. This comparison was both illuminating and moving.

For the Mystery Plays to be more than a pretty spectacle they have to speak to us in the here and now. The original mysteries did just that. After all, neither Jesus nor Noah were white, nor did they come from Yorkshire.

Council tax rise of 94p per week - March 2006

What does a 5.5% Council Tax rise mean in real money? I'll tell you, 94p per week for the average household. Three postage stamps. And, if the government decides to punish York for increasing Council Tax over 5%? The extra half a percent equals 8.4 pence per week.

Set this against £436.20, the average weekly wage in the North East in 2004. Of course, not everyone earns the average wage, which is why Lib Dems campaign for the Council Tax to be replaced by a fairer form of taxation that takes in account how much people earn.

Last year the government announced a pre-election sweetener of £200 for pensioners. A one-off £4 a week bribe, soon to disappear. It would be grotesque politicking if the City Council were then to be capped for adding an extra 8.4p per week, above an arbitrary 5%, to household bills.

In spite of financial constraints, already discussed at length, there is much to be welcomed in this year's budget. Exempting low emission vehicles from parking charges, for example, shows this council's determination to engage with the issue of Climate Change. I also welcome the decision to face up to the issue of equal pay for women.

The failure of the Labour opposition, yesterday, to explain how THEY would organise the budget shows that while the wheel may still be spinning, the hamster is very definitely dead. If they cannot agree amongst themselves in opposition, what on earth would happen if they were in power?

I take pride that our society believes in local government and the concept of communities. I only wish that instead of talking percentages we talked real money and set local tax at a level comparable to other local authorities so that we didn't have to cut services the vast majority of us, of all political parties, would far prefer not to cut.

Published and promoted by Christian Vassie, 10 Blake Court, Wheldrake, York YO19 6BT