Mayor

I was musing in an article review in my parallel service for community development stakeholders (CICStart -you can get it free on Wednesdays if you email me) who is now going to hold the new Police and Crime Commissioners to account. This story about the new mayor of Bristol raises similar questions in my mind. I do like however the idea of him taking his salary in Bristol £s and his ability to “get on with things”.

I wonder if we ought to have some “Rural Mayors”? George Ferguson, who beat 14 candidates to become mayor, also revealed on Monday that the hole in the city council’s budget was £32m – £4m greater than he had expected. Ferguson said he would work with anybody who could come up with a clever way of finding the savings needed without harming services. Ferguson’s first decision of his three-and-a-half year tenure was to scrap the name Council House and replace it with City Hall.

At his swearing-in ceremony at Temple Meads station, he said the new name showed that the building and the work that went on inside it belonged to the people of Bristol, not to the mayor or the councillors. Ferguson, wearing his trademark bright red trousers, also revealed that he was scrapping charges for on-street parking on Sundays. He said that from next year he would look at making parts of the city traffic-free on the first Sunday of every month, as happens in Bristol’s twin city, Bordeaux. To applause, Ferguson said he wanted to move fast. He did not want to commission expensive surveys or report on initiatives. “Let’s just do it and see how it turns out,” he said. Of his salary – currently £51,000, though the figure could change – Ferguson said he would take it in Bristol pounds, a currency introduced this year and proving a success.