http://www.hartlepool.vitalfootball.co.uk/article.asp?a=129171

Found this on the Poolie-Vitalfootball site - Its a good read!.... One question



Can the council hold meetings behind closed doors?

I want to shag every nun still alive. And those that arent.

Might be an idea if they held these meetings behind the same closed door, they might get a bit further forward

Yes there is legal power to keep council affairs secret. But there is a presumption of openness so you could challenge their decision to keep everything secret, which is arguably not in the public interest but is currently their position. Complain to the Local Ombudsman.

See

http://www.hartlepool.gov.uk/site/scripts/meetings_committees.php?headerID=29

my landlord is a councillor on the panel to decide.

I might withold rent until he agrees to sell.

thats not the geezer, but i agree with the comments, it is a conflict of interest for someone who attends games to be involved.

Is there not a counter argument to say that somebody who never attends games because they hate Pools or football in general also has a conflict of interests though?

I would say no because if you use the same example on a financial trader who worked in the city, it would be called inside trading.

Sounds a bit iffy to me!

I cant believe how long this is taking. Sell them the foooking ground

Surely the price must have gone down in recent months with reccession taking hold. Conversely IOR may not now want or be in a position to buy with oil prices going down.

my view is that pools are at a tipping point here. sell the ground to IOR, with strings attached to ensure the club will always be around and maybe we can begin to have real ambitions of a progressive future.
I think most of us at the minute are always thinking that disaster is just around the corner and we'll be back to the dark days,I think thats why there's still a lot of negativity around.should we be grateful we don't have to piss up against the wall at the back of the mill house still or should we be demanding facilities that we are actually paying for?
Let Ior buy the ground or get the council to properly realise what the club brings to the town and invest in it's best asset.
maybe Ior should take the same line with the council that it has with the mail....don't use our name to promote the town until you finacially back us.

"We want runs like this to be commonplace for this club, and we want to be in a position where we can say nine points out of ten isn't good enough - we let one point slip away from us.
But we won't be in that position as a club until we can sort out the long drawn-out negotiations between ourselves and Hartlepool Council for the purchase of the Victoria Ground.
I was delighted early this month when I learned that the Council is to form a special sub-committee to look into the matter, and I can only hope that this is a sign of a breakthrough in the negotiations.
Keep your fingers crossed for us."

The above was taken from Tuesday nights programme. The chairman's comments. But not Mr Hodcroft. It was part of the Vintage Pools feature, which was looking at the Programme for the match against Huddersfield on 29th January 1980. The words were written by Vince Barker.

Things don't change do they.

Good researching - one thing's changed, the price of the ground was £60k back then.

did we really ever get 9 points out of 10 when barker was in charge?
I suppose we owe the survival of the club to blokes like him.
60k wouldn't pay the week's wages now

Im no longer convinced that the sale of the ground is such a great idea.

Courtesy of In the Mad Crowd

Dec 26 23 York (H) 3-1 Ayre, Houchen, Hampton 17 2947
Dec 29 24 Rochdale (H) 1-1 Houchen 17 3151
Jan 05 25 Tranmere (H) 2-1 Houchen 2 15 2517
Jan 12 26 Aldershot (A) 2-0 Houchen, Newton 12 3516
Jan 19 27 Darlington (A) 1-0 Lawrence 10 4045

We went from 17th to 10th.

explain....

Can't go into detail for legal reasons but given Pools penchant for banning orders / rattle throwing, then I'm more comfortable with the ground being owned by the council.

well that doesn't really help the rest of us make an informed decision

marred is such an ugly word, id say accentuated by crowd violence

Strange comment

..... by the time they reach an agreement, we'll all be starring in Time Team anyway.

I remember the Council buying the ground so the club wouldn't go under and be lost from the town. Where is it safest?

The council owning the ground doesn't mean, the club have to remain there, if they ever went to pastures new, the council would have a sports venue with no use for it......... demolition would soon follow.
The ground was reportedly sold for £10,000 at the time time and in todays terms would work out at the value of four terraced street houses which were then going for £2,500 at the time, so the council actually got it for a bargain price. A similar deal would see the ground sold back for about £250,000, if the same standards were applied.

how much money would you spend on a rented property?
it makes no differance that they don't own it they can still ban anyone they don't want in but i heard bigger plans are a foot
but i got it from a taxi driver so say nowt

The club applies for grant through the local council, football bodies etc to subsidise the out lay of funds for ground improvements. The rental agreement with the council is more of a token payment and it not an extortionist amount

If the club had won promotion in 2005 via the play off final, the Rink End stand would of went ahead and building work would have started. The planning permission is in place and an inspection of the foundations was carried out for weight distribution at the time. A second tear will be added and the new stand extends to the rear of the club shop car park.

The one question the club will have to address is the incorporation of the club shop to the rear of the stand with it position in the car park. The only down side to these plans is the corner flag building and its members. The club wants this building and this will have to come to a conclusion in the near future if work is to progress in the direction the club wants to go.

The difference in these negotiations is the club is in a stronger bargaining position and is also plainly saying they are not prepared to look at any future investment in the ground until this subject is drawn to a positive conclusion. If this purchase goes through and the club will gains total control of the Victoria Park? This will put them in a very powerful position to sell or attract future investors with ownership of the ground. Only the passing of time will tell if the clubs future plans are in the towns/clubs interest or a vehicle to another acquisition in football - new club?


The last meetings held in 2006 with the council came to a fruitless conclusion for the club who had tabled an offer of around £300,000 to be pay paid in stage payments. The difference this time is both parties need each other to move forward as quoted in the original article below



The Sale Of The Vic


As discussions regarding the sale of Victoria Park continue TS24 takes a look at what the negotiations are actually about and how they could affect the future of the club.

As most people are aware that the club and council are again in talk over the sale of the ground to the current owners of the football club.

They have had over half a dozen meetings in these new talks and it is looking more likely this time that an agreement will be reached.

The leisure and bowling centres are part of these talk because of the future redevelopment of land on the Millhouse side of the ground. A large section of land is owned by the football club under the current leasing agreement between themselves and the council.

Feasibility studies are to be carried out in connection with traffic, egress, building regulations etc for any changes to properties or land around the stadium.

Plans are in place to extend the rink end part of the ground and the club wants to expand to open up new avenues for future income to be generated. Plans have also been made of sites on Brenda Road for a new stadium.

This would need large investment, football grants etc and would be a long process to implicate in future times. So the current negotiations for ownership of the ground is a more viable option for the club to expand and invest for the future.

These meetings have been held behind closed doors between both parties, yet the names of the committee have been published in the local newspaper.

One name that springs to mind is the chairman of the council delegation involved in these discussions. Councillor Robbie Payne (Ward: Stranton) is a person who goes to home games and a few away ones. Surely is this not a conflict for himself to be making decisions on behalf of the council? The town's mayor, Stuart Drummond, cannot be involved in these talks for the very same reason.

Only time will tell if all parties can come to an agreement that is beneficial for all involved.

The only negative though I would have about the club being successful in its bid to purchase the ground? What would be put in place to stop the club from selling the club/ground at a large profit and walking away in the near future?

welcome to the board

To much writing on one post for you to digest as your reply above is a total wastes of finger power.

One way or another, this will affect us all if you follow pools from a supporter’s stance. Not so much the ones who work direct for the club as they have a rather blinked view on current events that are going on outside that cocooned little world.

No Just a total wastes of finger power

The waste of finger power is creating a new user account to type out one long winded post

Ouch -

Well you would need to create a new user account if you wanted to posting on the board for the first time. Self explanatory real if you think about it.

Bit late with the reply, but work gets in the way. The UK has to get its oil & gas ...

Ts24 is a member of Vitalfootball site since 2005