Paid Parking in Kinnegad

Dear Editor, The news in last weeks Examiner that Kinnegad paid parking has been axed will come as a major relief to the business and wider community.The proposal would have made Kinnegad by far the smallest area in Ireland with paid parking and would have crippled the dwindling main street business community at a time when they are also struggling with road works.The whole paid parking issue gives rise to two important points.The first is the need to deal with these issues before they become either drawn out or adversarial. Over many years both the business community and the Community Council had proposed two hour parking, signage, a designated car park, a bus depot/shelter, reopening Killucan Station, etc. At initial meetings it was to be a joint approach that everyone could agree on and that would take the sleepers off the street. The whole episode has pointed to the need for a task force/consultative body for Kinnegad and indeed other Westmeath areas that would meet at least twice a year and look for cooperative polices and joint initiatives. This could comprise council officials, area representatives, and community and business leaders. In the third biggest town in the county where there is no full time council presence, this is a particular necessity.The second issue is that the €30,000 appropriated for parking enhancement measures in the town has now been redistributed. It seems to me that if this was allocated for traffic control and parking restriction in Kinnegad it should be used for just that: there are so many other ways this could be achieved. I hope the meeting proposed to look at the situation will now have some form of resourcing at its disposal for whatever solution is arrived at. It should be kept in mind the alternative car park on the Athlone Road has also been long fingered.Further to this Kinnegad"s library project on Main Street has been sidelined and so much now depends on the go ahead of the old school as an arts/civic amenity centre; this needs crucial small grants at the moment to access the large arts grant and make Kinnegad a third level centre. This and smaller projects like signage, the Slí na Sláinte walk/tourist initiatives and action on derelict buildings would help rejuvenate main street. In the end there is still no joined up plan for the digging up of the streets and restoring surfaces and footpaths. The peoples park never received its promised lighting and many of the estates (none of which have been taken over) are without working street lights in various locations.The old adage that if you do not learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it applies here. Let us hope that Kinnegad can be developed post-bypass into the thriving attractive location it has been for decades with a little joined up thinking on parking, on Main Street in general, and on the wider long term development of community and business facilities.SincerelyDenis Leonard.