#towncouncil — Public Fediverse posts

Berlin voters rejects town, BOE budgets; officials to revise plan | News

BERLIN — Voters rejected both the town government and Board of Education budgets in Tuesday’s referendum, with many…
#Germany #DE #Europe #EU #Europa #Berlin #boardofeducation #boardoffinance #budgetreferendum #ryancurley #towncouncil #townmanager
https://www.europesays.com/germany/8834/

Dewey Beach council approves beach dining plan in 5-0 vote | News https://www.diningandcooking.com/2564231/dewey-beach-council-approves-beach-dining-plan-in-5-0-vote-news/ #10Tables #11PMCleanup #44Seats #50Vote #AlcoholRestrictions #BaysideBoardwalk #BeachAccess #BeachDining #CommunityConcerns #DesignatedSeating #DeweyBeach #DickinsonAvenue #dining #DiningOnTheSand #LighthouseRestaurant #May1 #October31 #OutdoorSeating #PublicAccess #PublicBeach #SixMonthLease #SummerSeason #TownCouncil #UnanimousApproval

Dewey Beach council approves beach dining plan in 5-0 vote | News https://www.diningandcooking.com/2564231/dewey-beach-council-approves-beach-dining-plan-in-5-0-vote-news/ #10Tables #11PMCleanup #44Seats #50Vote #AlcoholRestrictions #BaysideBoardwalk #BeachAccess #BeachDining #CommunityConcerns #DesignatedSeating #DeweyBeach #DickinsonAvenue #dining #DiningOnTheSand #LighthouseRestaurant #May1 #October31 #OutdoorSeating #PublicAccess #PublicBeach #SixMonthLease #SummerSeason #TownCouncil #UnanimousApproval

Dewey Beach council approves beach dining plan in 5-0 vote | News https://www.diningandcooking.com/2564231/dewey-beach-council-approves-beach-dining-plan-in-5-0-vote-news/ #10Tables #11PMCleanup #44Seats #50Vote #AlcoholRestrictions #BaysideBoardwalk #BeachAccess #BeachDining #CommunityConcerns #DesignatedSeating #DeweyBeach #DickinsonAvenue #dining #DiningOnTheSand #LighthouseRestaurant #May1 #October31 #OutdoorSeating #PublicAccess #PublicBeach #SixMonthLease #SummerSeason #TownCouncil #UnanimousApproval

From Michelin to moaning: Napa chef blasts affordable housing effort

Plans to build workforce housing in one of Napa Valley’s most exclusive towns are running into resistance from a local dining…
#dining #cooking #diet #food #Frenchrestaurants #francais #france #French #FrenchRestaurants #housingproject #Restaurants #thomaskeller #TownCouncil #townofficials #workforcehousing #yountville
https://www.diningandcooking.com/2543046/from-michelin-to-moaning-napa-chef-blasts-affordable-housing-effort/

From Michelin to moaning: Napa chef blasts affordable housing effort https://www.diningandcooking.com/2543046/from-michelin-to-moaning-napa-chef-blasts-affordable-housing-effort/ #francais #france #French #FrenchRestaurants #HousingProject #Restaurants #ThomasKeller #TownCouncil #TownOfficials #WorkforceHousing #yountville

Council looking at relaunching best garden competition https://www.allforgardening.com/1602810/council-looking-at-relaunching-best-garden-competition/ #BritainInBloom #BritishTouristBoard #competition. #garden #TauntonDeaneBoroughCouncil #TownCouncil

An Alabama LGBTQ+ bar advertised a drag show. Then the city denied its liquor license

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.advocate.com/news/alabama-lgbtq-drag-liquor-license

An Alabama LGBTQ+ bar advertised a drag show. Then the city denied its liquor license

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.advocate.com/news/alabama-lgbtq-drag-liquor-license

An Alabama LGBTQ+ bar advertised a drag show. Then the city denied its liquor license

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.advocate.com/news/alabama-lgbtq-drag-liquor-license

An Alabama LGBTQ+ bar advertised a drag show. Then the city denied its liquor license

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.advocate.com/news/alabama-lgbtq-drag-liquor-license

#TownCouncil flies #ProgressPrideflag from #Townhall despite #Hatemongering #MP’s #objection: ‘It’s our #building’

#GreatYarmouth #BoroughCouncil has flown a #ProgressPrideflag outside its #townhall, sending a clear message to the #ReformUK #MP who #opposed the #idea.

#Women #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #UK #Allies #Representation #Culture #ReformUK #TERFS #Hate #Bigotry #Discrimination #Homophobia #Transphobia

https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/10/10/town-hall-flies-progress-pride-flag-despite-reform-uk-mps-objection/

The “most fortunate of the city politicians”: the thread about the life and times of Orlando Hart

Last week’s thread about the bankers Sir James Hunter Blair and Sir William Forbes contained a caricature by the prolific John Kay that satirised the local political scandal of “The Levelling of the High Street” as part of the construction of the South Bridge. On the left is a local politician by the name of Orlando Hart.

Orlando? I didn’t at first believe there was a man in 18th century Edinburgh called Orlando! Lowland Scotland in the 18th and 19th century had a habit of naming their sons from a rather small pool of names – work by Richard Rodger on the 1861 Census has shown that a full 50% of boys in Edinburgh were named either John, James, William or Robert and the top 10 most popular names accounted for 79% of all boys. But it turns out I was totally wrong, and Orlando Hart was one of a population of (probably) just two Orlandos in the whole country at this time. I am informed (thank you Corpyburd on Twitter) that this seed of doubt, on my part, has a name – The Tiffany Problem. This is when people do not believe something historical is true, because it sounds modern, and takes its name from people associating the name Tiffany so strongly with the 1980s and a certain pop star that they cannot believe it was a relatively common medieval name. So I just had to try and find out a bit more about this exotically-named man.

So who was Orlando Hart? When and where he was born, I do not know, I cannot find any birth registration for him, but based on the known facts of his life he was probably born between 1720-30. Hart wasn’t a particularly common surname in Edinburgh at the time, only 12 boys and 8 girls named Hart were registered born in Edinburgh in the 20 years 1715-1735. So unless he was born under a different name as one of those 12, I assume he may not have been born in Edinburgh. In 1751 we get our first solid record of him, when a journeyman1 shoemaker of his name married Elisabeth Henderson of the Water of Leith Village at the West Kirk of St. Cuthberts.

1. A journeyman is a craftsman who had finished their trade apprenticeship but was not their own master, i.e. he worked for another ↩︎

Children followed; (Mac)Duff in 1755 (named after a friend), Archibald in 1760 and Katharine in 1766. A son also named Orlando Hart, was buried in 1772. Like many aspiring and connected men of the time, Orlando was a Freemason; in 1755-57 and again in 1761-62 he was a Grand Steward in the Grand Lodge of Scotland – a man clearly getting somewhere in life. It is evident he was popular amongst his contemporaries, in 1757 he was elected to the Monarchy of the Jolly Sons of St. Crispin – a fraternal organisation for shoemakers and by 1760 he was noted as a “Shoemaker in Lady Yester’s Parish“. Lady Yester’s – or the South East Parish of Edinburgh – served the portion of the city south of the Cowgate and east of College Wynd. The church moved from a 17th century building in the High School Yards to a new one on Infirmary Street in 1805.

But Orlando Hart was moving upwards in life and didn’t stay still long, 3 years later he was a “Shoemaker In the Mint” – the old Royal Mint of Scotland, north of the Cowgate where Coinyie-House Close now stands. He is recorded as being shoemaker to James Boswell in the latter’s correspondence.

Successful and popular as a shoemaker and a freemason, it was natural that local politics should follow and in 1766 he was elected Deacon of his Trade Incorporation, the Cordiners. (Cordwainer was the ancient word for a shoemaker, who made shoes from new leather – Cordoba, from the Spanish city of Córdoba where the best shoe leather traditionally came from. A “cobbler” in contrast was someone who repaired, or re-made, shoes.) The Deacon was the most senior office holder of his Trade, elected by and from amongst his peers. It also conferred him a seat on the town council as a representative of his Trade. Further success followed, in 1771 he was elected Convenor of the Trades, the most senior officer of all the city’s Trade Incorporations.

His rise did not stop there. By 1773 he was a Magistrate – a legal officer of the Town Council in the lowest level of courts – again the Trades had a right to put forward a candidate for one of these positions. The Town Council and its officers at this time was a mixture of elected councillors and also a balance of seats held by the representatives of the Trades and the Merchants. By now, Orlando Hart’s business has moved to the centre of the Old Town, “Opposite the Guard“, meaning the old guard house lodge in the centre of the High Street, between the Tron Kirk and St. Giles. A prestigious address, in a time before the Old Town was yet to be supplanted by the New Town as the place to do business.

Not content to be just a successful Shoemaker, freemason, man of his Trade and local politician, he was also quite a dab hand with his golf clubs. Golf was a pastime that occupied the important men of the city and was as much a place to fraternise and do business as to improve your handicap. When the Royal Burgess Golfing Society reformed in 1773, who should be elected club captain but Orlando Hart?

He represented the City as a Commissioner of the Convention of Royal Burghs, where the representatives of the various Burghs would gather once or twice a year to thrash out the issues of the day, and also at the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland alongside the Lord Provost of Edinburgh (the most powerful local politician in all of Scotland). In 1775 he was once again elected Deacon Convenor of the Trades – for a good 25 years of his life he was constantly in one office of local government or another. These were positions elected from and amongst his peers, a mark of his popularity amongst them. John Kay’s brief biography says he was “Considered one of the most fortunate of the city politicians… He possessed a happy knack of suiting himself to circumstances, and was peculiarly sagacious in keeping steady by the leading men in the magistracy”. What this means was that Hart was always careful to align himself to the most senior men in the council, whomever they may be, without treading on the toes of others. He was awarded the honorific (and profitable) office of Keeper of the Town Water Works.

In 1787, Orlando Hart’s name appears at the back of an important book as subscriber to “Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect” – the Edinburgh reprint of Robert Burns’ sensational début publication, which saw the good and the great of the city clamouring for the author’s favour. A year later, his name pops up in another interesting place; as being called to assize as a Juror in the case of one William Brodie – Deacon Brodie to you and I. Brodie was a man who had once held an equivalent office of local government, Deacon, as Orlando, but the latter was not selected to sit on the jury.

Hart must have been well into his sixties by 1791 when he was once again elected as one of the two Town Councillors representing the Trades. By this time he must also have been exceptionally wealthy, as he bought a feu on Charlotte Square – the newest and most prestigious development in town – to build himself a house. That feu was for number 6, which he bought for £290. He spent probably spent ten times that on completing the house to Robert Adam’s plans (a total c. £490k in 2023). Number 6 Charlotte Square is of course Bute House, residence of the First Minister of Scotland.

It is not clear if Orlando Hart ever lived in the house himself, he died on September 9th 1793, no more than a year after its completion and just months after being elected as one of the managers of the Public Dispensary of Edinburgh . His wife, Elisabeth Henderson, died exactly a week later. Macduff Hart, who was his sole surviving son by this time, inherited Orlando Hart & Sons shoemakers. It was from the estate of Orlando Hart that No. 6 was sold to the Craufurd family in 1796, Mrs Isabella Craufurd being the widow of a banker and owner of a plantation and 600 slaves in Jamaica. She took up residence there with her son.

That was the life and times of Orlando Hart; I have yet to find his registry of death so cannot identify where Hart’s Ground, the family burial plot was. I also suspect he may have been godfather to a number of children as I can find boys born in Edinburgh during his lifetime of his name – Orlando Hart Baillie (son of a Shoemaker) and an Orlando Hart Wilson, who would go on to enjoy a relatively successful naval career.

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#Missouri #Local #GOP #Chair Tried to #Block #Gay #Pastor’s #LibraryBoard #Reappointment

He gave the #nonpartisan #towncouncil and #mayor an #ultimatum to #exclude the #gay #pastor.

#Women #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #Conservatives #Extremism #Fascism #RepublicanParty #Hate #Bigotry #Violence #Genocide #Discrimination #Homophobia #Transphobia #ThePartyOfHate
https://www.advocate.com/politics/missouri-gop-threat-gay-pastor

Experimenting with spray painting posters for three candidates for the Westport, NY Town Council: Jen Williams, Michael Fergot, & Joan Lilly.

#westportny #campaignsigns #stencilart #spraypaintart #towncouncil

Joining the Finance & Governance Committee Meeting at Bletchley & Fenny Stratford Town Council remotely today. You can follow along on our new live stream too: https://www.youtube.com/live/3h6nJ6VJ0kE?feature=share

#Bletchley #FennyStratford #TownCouncil #OpenDemocracy

#ukpolitics Every local council should be on Mastodon/Fedi and combinations thereof, both for staff and citizens. It should be doubly important for politics to show willingness towards independence from Corporations and Algorithms. Fedi's a perfect start. #citycouncil #TownCouncil

#Pride #posters go up in #Hedon #highstreet after #town #council #votes not to fly #PrideFlag.

Yet the #Hedon #TownCouncil attempted to claim it was wholly #supportive of the #Pride #movement.

#Women #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #UK #Hate #Bigotry #Discrimination #Homophobia #Transphobia

https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/hull-east-yorkshire-news/pride-posters-go-up-hedon-8566015

#Outrage as #Yorkshire #towncouncil decides not to fly #Prideflag

The #Hedon #TownCouncil in #EastYorkshire isn't flying a #flag for #Pride on its #TownHall.

#Women #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #UK #Pride #PrideMonth #Hate #Bigotry #Discrimination #Homophobia #Transphobia #TERFIsland

https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/local-news/outrage-yorkshire-town-council-decides-27220284