Thursday 5 March 2015

Trust me - I'm from Whitstable

We are becoming more and more trusting in Whitstable. Or perhaps others find us to be trustworthy folk.

Whichever it is, we seem to be putting our faith increasingly in trusts to run our town.

Whitstable Museum, with its opening hours slashed by Canterbury City Council who seem to be putting all their eggs into the Beaney basket, is currently being handed over to a team of trustees and volunteers.

Now there's talk of KCC outsourcing the library to... another trust. I confess to getting a little confused in reading about these two hot topics of discussion in the local papers and on social media, because it sometimes looks to me as if the same people who are supporting the museum trust are against the library being run in the same way. I'm not taking sides, but what's sauce for local artefacts is surely sauce for books and dvds?

There are already several trusts in this quite small town: Whitstable Castle, Horsebridge Centre, Whitstable Improvement Trust, the Umbrella Centre.... any more?

I wonder if soon we are going to run out of generous-minded people willing to give up their spare time to be unpaid trustees or helpers to keep all these things running!
Already, I know there is some overlap of individuals being involved in more than one trust. Probably not a bad thing, as experience in one can inform another.

So maybe the next logical step is just to hand over Whitstable to one big single, all-encompassing board of trustees?

Come on KCC and CCC - cast our coastal town adrift and let's run everything ourselves.
Trust us!