Mayor Announces Sandwell's Year Of Communities
| Published: 23rd June 2008 22:23 |
Sandwell's new mayor has announced a year of community celebration for his period of office.
Councillor Bob Price was recently 'sworn in' as mayor at the annual meeting of the council, with wife Councillor Barbara Price as mayoress.
Councillor Price said he was thrilled to announce that the 2008-9 civic year will be Sandwell's Year of Communities.
A Sandwell Year of Communities web page will be launched shortly.
Councillor Price has worked for the Royal Mail since leaving school at 15. He started as one of the last 'Telegram Boys' and then, once it had been disbanded, started as a postman. He has been given permission to take a one-year career break to be a full-time mayor.
Councillor Price said: "As someone who's lived in Blackheath all my life, been a postman locally for 40 years and a Sandwell councillor for the last 18 years, I've got to know the local area and its people pretty well. However, I look forward to getting to know our communities much better during my mayoral year.
"I've already attended some fabulous community events during my first few weeks in office - including the Springwatch Festival at Thimblemill Brook, which attracted over 3,000 people and appeared on national television.
"From my experience, people who live and work in Sandwell are, in the vast majority, friendly, welcoming, hardworking and proud people. Our communities are diverse, but we generally all get on well together, respect each other and have shared values, hopes and priorities for how we want to improve the borough, for ourselves and future generations.
"This is something we should all be proud of and something I look forward to celebrating during our Year of Communities, as well as reaching out to those people and groups in our community that might not currently feel part of Sandwell society, to look at how they can become more involved and ensure everyone has the opportunity to achieve their full potential."
Councillor Price said the borough was very lucky to have a rich variety of events, large and small, held across the six towns each year. Some of these are organised by the council and / or partner organisations, some by the local community and some are a joint effort.
He added: "We will be looking to raise greater awareness of these to local people and exploring ideas of how to make the borough's events calendar even more enticing to all our communities in future years.
"We will also be trying to capture images and stories from events this year, so we have a record of the Year of Communities 2008-9 for both current and future Sandwell generations."
