THE MAYOR of Lampeter has questioned whether it would be fair to residents to use the town council’s reserves to pay for someone to clean the town after comments by a former town councillor.

Last week, the Cambrian News reported that Dinah Mulholland - who sat on Lampeter town council until May’s elections - called on the council to use some of its £103,677 reserves in the bank to employ a local person full-time to keep the streets of Lampeter clean and tidy.

In its budget set earlier this year, Lampeter Town Council set aside £4,000 to deploy a county council staff member on an overtime basis to clean the streets in town when there are events going on.

Town councillors discussed the issue at a meeting last Thursday, and mayor Cllr Helen Thomas told the Cambrian News following the meeting that the council “needs to consider that residents of Lampeter are already paying towards the cost of having their streets cleaned already through their Council Tax contributions.”

“Taking on an employee such as a street cleaner employed by the Town Council is a complex matter and not quite as straightforward as has possibly been implied by Dinah Mulholland,” Cllr Thomas said.

“If we were to employ a person to take on this work then we would want the employment to be sustainable and not create a situation where after a few years for example we would have to make that person redundant should the Town Council financial situation change.

“I also think we need to consider that residents of Lampeter are already paying towards the cost of having their streets cleaned already through their Council Tax contributions.

“We have allocated extra hours for a street cleaner to clean the main streets up to an acceptable standard before major events.

“We are currently sharing provision of a street cleaner with Tregaron paid for by the County Council.

“Four of our town councillors met with Dave Edwards earlier this summer to walk the town streets and work followed to spray and clean streets of weeds.

“Hopefully this work will continue in the future.

“Is it fair to ask residents to pay further out of town council reserves for further additional cleaning when this money could be partly ring fenced for example for other projects and donations to benefit the town during a challenging economic time?”