Councillor warns against Westport pay and display

Anton McNulty

A WESTPORT councillor has told a senior official with Mayo County Council that it should not be thinking of introducing on-street pay and display parking in Westport.
Fianna FΡil councillor Brendan Mulroy told Director of Services Paddy Mahon that Westport was successful because it has not introduced on street pay and display parking and it should not be brought in.
Cllr Mulroy raised that issue at yesterday’s meeting of the Roads and Transportation SPC after Mr Mahon said that towns could not ignore the need to generate their own income stream to pay for amenities. “It is not something we can ignore for better or worse,” he told the members during a debate on allocations for regional and local roads.

ONE-HOUR PARKING
Westport is the only large town in Mayo which has not introduced on-street pay and display metering and instead operates a one-hour parking system. Cllr Mulroy told Mr Mahon that towns that have introduced pay and display parking are ‘dying on their feet’.
He added that there was nothing to indicate that the money generated in a particular town from pay and display was actually spent in that town.
Cllr Rose Conway-Walsh added that property tax was supposed to pay for local amenities and she would oppose the introduction of on-street parking charges in Belmullet.
Earlier, the members of the SPC had discussed a supplementary allocation for regional and local roads which was made available to the Council in July.
Cllr Conway-Walsh said the announcement was ‘disingenuous’ because of the amount of cut-backs in the roads budget and not something they should be grateful for.
Cllr Mulroy said the regional and local roads were getting worse and worse and asked where the budget given for the three town councils to look after their streets had gone, as he felt the current budget did not cover them.