Newly elected Mayor of Kildare-Newbridge Municipal District vows to tackle traffic issues in Newbridge
By Kim O'Leary
The newly elected Mayor for the Kildare-Newbridge Municipal District, Fianna Fail Cllr Murty Aspell, has vowed to address issues such as increasing traffic volumes in Newbridge.
Last month Cllr Martin ‘Murty’ Aspell a native of Newbridge who has more than 20 years’ worth of experience in local politics was elected as Mayor of the Kildare-Newbridge Municipal District with Fianna Fail Cllr Suzanne Doyle elected as Deputy Mayor.
Speaking to KildareNow about his election, Cllr Aspell said: “It's a fantastic honour to be elected as mayor and I have been very fortunate to have been elected 3 times over 20 years through the town councils before now but the municipal District Council obviously has a bigger responsibility and a bigger budget to deal with but I'm looking forward to that challenge.”
Cllr Aspell also said that the election process to choose the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of the Kildare-Newbridge Municipal District is a fair process which follows initial criticism from some councillors regarding the process. “The election process is fair as far as I'm concerned people that want to put their name forward need to ask their colleagues for support and if you have the numbers well then that's fair enough I don't think there needs to be any change in that it's a democracy.”
Meanwhile, amongst the issues that Cllr Aspell hopes to further address include the synchronisation of lights and the high volume of traffic in Newbridge. He said: “Traffic is a huge problem in Newbridge right now the synchronisation of lights needs to be looked at again. I don't understand how to Scoop system hasn't adjusted to the volumes of traffic that are coming into Newbridge now so that is certainly one of my priorities and I hope that I can address that with my colleagues over the year.”
Next week on Monday 24 September there will be a special meeting where the members of Kildare County Council will cast their vote to endorse a candidate to contest the Presidential Election next month. The council will consider endorsing either Gavin Duffy, Sarah Louise Mulligan, Sean Gallagher, or to abstain from backing any candidate.
Duffy and Gallagher have already received the backing of four county councils so any endorsement given from Kildare County Council will make no difference. However, while Cllr Aspell has given his backing to Duffy, he said that it is important for candidates to have certain qualities.
“I think the qualities for the Presidential elections are you need to be able to connect to the people you need to be open transparent and accountable. I also think that our current president Michael D Higgins has done a wonderful job but I also think it's great to have people interested in putting their names forward Plus you don’t want complacency to set in thinking that you're alway be safe in your job,” said Cllr Aspell.
He added: “For me as a FF member I was disappointed to see that we have not nominated a particular candidate but it's been left up to individuals to decide who they would like to support which is good too.”