IT’S been a wonderful year to be the Mayor of Ramsey.

The jubilee celebrations really were the talk of the town and I was very proud of the souvenir programme the town council produced for the events over that weekend. The community really pulled together and held street parties, attended the church service, and saw the lighting of the beacon. It was exciting to dedicate our Millfields Park to be the Queen Elizabeth II Park – this makes us very unique in the county as we now have two parks named after two British monarchs.

Over a thousand residents attend the Party in the Park and had a fun-filled day and saw our first Community Champions receive their awards.

The state of the economy is pulling on all our purse strings so I am immensely pleased to see the Ramsey Community Arcade and indoor market becoming more established and that we are welcoming new shops to the Great Whyte and High Street. Ramsey can also celebrate having a community radio station based in the centre of town.

Other long-term projects are also moving forward. Ramsey was awarded �1million of funding by the Big Lottery Million and a team of residents has now been established and they are going to make the decisions on how the money is spent. We shall soon start to see the benefits of this in our community.

As a council we are working to build communications with our residents and next year will launch our newsletter. We have invested in a new pond pump and have been building up community volunteers – they can be seen hard at work at the indoor market, cemetery and cleaning the public toilets. Early next year we will be putting new equipment on both the King George V field and the QEII – these are aimed at Ramsey’s teenagers.

We are still working on traffic calming and appreciate the work of Speedwatch.

I am looking forward to leading the council in the early part of next year and delivering a budget that will keep our taxes down and improve your lives in our community.

I wish you all a prosperous new year.