THE MAYOR of Ammanford and local councillor for the Myddynfych ward Andrew Lewis has written an open letter to the people of Ammanford explaining the decision behind why there a fewer Christmas lights than usual in the town this year. The letter reads as follows : ‘I know some people have been complaining about the lights, and to be honest I’m a little disappointed too, but I am part of the sub group that has made the decisions this year. ‘ Firstly, we, the Town Council, were spending over £17 ,000 a year renting Christmas lights for the town. Our contract was up this year where we have spent over £54 ,000 in the last three years.‘
Now Llanelli and Carmarthen have a precept of over £1m. ‘ We have a precept of £80 ,000 , which means we were spending almost 25% of our precept on Christmas lights that were up for 3 weeks of the year. ‘ We have decided to start purchasing lights, and placing trees around the town. Unfortunately we ran in to a problem in the piazza with underground High voltage and fibre. However, we are looking to sort that for next year, and have also now had permission to put a tree at the top of Quay Street by the square for next year. ‘ We did have Motifs on the lampposts 3 years ago, but SWTRA (South Wales Transport and Road Agency) made us take them down due to weight restrictions on the lampposts and we weren’t allowed to use them anymore. ‘
We are going to talk to businesses next year to see if we can install such motifs on their buildings. ‘ Finally, we wanted to rent lights to go across the square, but weren’t able to do so until we knew our expenditure for purchasing and installing the new lights. ‘ We have found out that the brackets that hold these lights require maintenance and therefore decided it was too dangerous for this year to go ahead, however, we have a Christmas lights sub group meeting in January to start discussing next year. ‘ I know they aren’t quite what we have had in previous years, but I hope you can all understand the decision process that we have reached for this year. ‘ I welcome any comments/ advice, good or bad, for us to take into January’s meeting. ‘ Thanks for your understanding.”
Add Comment