The AGM for the community development association was held on Thursday the 16th of February in the James O’Keeffe institute. 13 people attended the meeting.

Brian Dugdale was elected as PRO and Lisa O’Donoghue replaced Sean Browne as treasurer. A number of different topics were discussed:

Tidy Towns – results were good this year. We came top of our category with 6 points up on the previous year. Town clean-up were run every Tuesday from 7pm to 8pm throughout the Summer. A regular group of volunteers turned out every week to pick up litter, sweep gravel off the paths and to assist with the preparation and maintenance of the biodiversity garden. There was a much lower turn out last year and it is felt that steps need to be taken to improve numbers. We could do really great work if we had better numbers to help out on the clean-up nights. Thanks to the volunteers who did come out each week and also to FÁS who did a huge amount of work in the town throughout the year. Thanks to the Secret Garden for their help and advice. Thanks also to Denis Roche.

Trader’s Association – We had a number of meetings last year. We ran a poster campaign for people to shop local. There was a shopping week over Easter and an article in the Corkman. The Christmas fair was very successful (specifically Brian and Jane). The venue looked great and almost 30 businesses participated. We hope to build on this success in 2012.

Christmas lights – New lights were purchased this year. We received a lot of donations from different groups. Thanks to the GAA, Darts League and traders for their donations. Thanks to Fás and Willie O’Keeffe for all the work putting up the lights.

The Newmarket Town Enhancements Grant – Members of the committee met with Helen O’Sullivan of IRD in August to discuss the possibility of applying for a Leader grant for some enhancements for the town. This grant was approved in October for the following work:

Upgrade of Playground – replace some of existing equipment, freshen remaining equipment and repair/replace tiles.

Repair of paths within the park and creation of a path circling around the pitch

Replacement of wiring between the pitch and the playground

Sign Posts (identification signs). Signs at the cross in particular will be replaced and the Irish translation for Church Street will be corrected (to sráid an teampaill).

New Mural for the playground wall

Christmas Lights Purchase and Putting up Christmas Lights

This work will be ongoing over the next 12 months.

We will need to fund raise aggressively to help to pay for this work so local support will be much appreciated.

The Website – we hope to provide more functionality and content in the website this year. We would like to appeal to people to send any photos or clippings related to Newmarket so that we can share with the community on line. We will also be creating a section for articles on the site so if you would like to submit anything for inclusion in this section please email to contact@athtrasna.com.