The People’s Budget is about local people voting to make direct decisions about how local public budgets are spent. £10,000 of the Council’s 2018/2019 budget was made available for a project to be decided on by the Town Vote, with the voting open from April 4th 2018 to May 3rd 2018.
These projects were:
A Town Orchard
Scrumping to be encouraged! The orchard will look beautiful and provide food for humans and wildlife alike.
- It would comprise a large range of local varieties of fruit tree, seating areas and a central pergola or structure
- The orchard will provide free fruit for crumbles, pies, juices and ciders
- Trees and fruit are also good for local wildlife
- The orchard will also help to relieve drainage issues on the site and enhance biodiversity
- £10 K would provide a good size orchard and all the infrastructure to make an excellent community resource
A Dog Poo Powered Light
Aimed at encouraging all owners to pick up after their dog while highlighting the potential of alternative power
- The bio-digester uses dog poo in compostable bags to generate gas and light a methane powered street lamp
- It will incentivise people to pick up after their dogs and raises the profile of carbon free energy sources
- The lamp also produces liquid fertiliser
- 10 bags of poo can generate 2 hours of light
- £10 k covers unit (which could take 15kg of poo a day) and installation
A Giant Waterslide
This one day event would take over one of the hills in Frome. Lucky ticket winners will get soaked – guaranteed!
- A waterslide would be installed for a day on one of Frome’s hilly streets.
- Based on Luke Jerram’s ‘Park and Stride’ it allows people to reclaim the streets from cars for a day with a fun event
- Tickets to slide will be by ballot with up to 240 tickets being issued
- The event will be free and used to launch the You’re Welcome Scheme – combining the current community toilet scheme and a new water bottle refill scheme
Results
The Town Orchard won with an overwhelming majority. The orchard will be delivered this year in consultation with an arborist.
To learn more, please visit: Frome Town Council
