Another Extraordinary Meeting of Smalltown and Dullbridge (SaD) Town Council is due to take place tonight and this time it’s the turn of the Finance and Misappropriation Committee. These Extraordinary Meetings are starting to become so common that they may as well be called Ordinary.
On the agenda for discussion are the new ‘Tartification Grants’ which offer up to £1,000 in matched funding to shopkeepers and other businesses in the Town. SaD Town Council has £15,000 to give away and you’d assume that applications from businesses in need of some cash to tart up their shop fronts were plenty.
Sadly this hasn’t been the case and only four applications have been received. Of these it seems that only one has understood the rules and the meaning of ‘match funding’.
Hairdressing business Trim and Cropper has asked for the full £1000, estimating that the cost of repairing some rotten woodwork and purchasing planters and flowers for the pavement outside will cost £1,440. The applicant has promised to fund the unmatched matched funding of £440 themselves and have further promised to maintain the planters by watering the flowers within.
Rival Hairdressers Smalltown Cut and Colour has also applied, again for the maximum £1,000 but this time for a project to replace the premises signage, as well as some flowerpots and exterior lighting because ‘Jetty Street is really dark and gloomy’. The full project cost is said to be £2,200 with the applicant promising to fund the difference by working late to raise the funds.
Meanwhile Tiffins Food Shop has applied for a grant to purchase a new door to replace a broken one at the side of the building, which is therefore not a shop front at all, but is a separate entrance to the flat behind. Moreover the applicant estimates the cost of the project to be in the region of £885 yet has requested funding of £1,000, with no mention of what the excess will be spent on.
The final application comes from craft shop TreeFrieze who has understood the rules and applied for funding of £305 for a project cost of £610. The applicant plans to use the funding to help smarten up the weathered and tired looking front, by
removing and replacing rotting wood and painting the frontage. Perhaps TreeFrieze could share the name of the tradesman who will carry out the work with Trim and Cropper, since his prices are more reasonable than the latter’s costings.
The money to fund the Tartification Grants has come from the All-New-Yet-Unimproved Somerset Cuonty Council, and it is thought likely that all four applications will be successful as the BeFuddled Party do not like to upset anyone by climbing off their fences and saying’ No’.
Applications from shop and business owners in Dullbridge failed to meet the first criteria – Is your business in Smalltown? – and were immediately filed in the Smalltown Administration Guru, Katie Global’s paper recycling bin.
There aren’t many shop fronts left in Dullbridge because they’re boarded up or turned into flats or bedsits now. And ASDA can afford to do their own.
Jetty Street gloomy?
Hardly, given the way it’s lit up for Christmas thanks to the Squire’s compliance with the Christmas Fairy that is Mistress Bones.
Although does rather fit Squire’s narrative that there are no lights in that part of town so there must be a ridiculously expensive Christmas Tree paid for by the council tax payer.
What with trees, fountains and skating rinks it’s a very expensive part of town!