France/Development. The mayor of Oisemont wants to increase the attractiveness of his town

Published on 22/06/2022 | La rédaction

France

For his first term, the mayor of Oisemont, Amaury Caulier has many ambitions for his city, which he intends to develop, to increase its attractiveness.

Picardie La Gazette :Can you present us your city?

Amaury Caulier: Oisemont has 1,200 inhabitants, a figure that has been falling for several years but we hope to reverse the trend with the policy we are pursuing. It is an aging town despite a new housing estate because it has been invested by children from Oisemont.

To increase the number of inhabitants we have just bought plots of land which will be resold. The goal will be to focus on multigenerational living. We are also fighting against vacant housing. The municipality has put in place a tax on those that have been vacant for more than two years. We have gone from 75 to 60 vacant units.

A tax on bare building land has also been introduced. We have few inhabitants, but we attract those of the surrounding villages, as if Oisemont had 2,500 inhabitants, without the subsidies that go with it... It is an attractive town but we can do better.

And what about economic activity?

Oisemont is fortunate to have a business park, Les Quarantes, which was built about 20 years ago, at the same time as the ring road. It is home to a shopping center with a supermarket, a pharmacy, a bakery, an optician, a shoe store, a decoration store and a brasserie.

The area also includes a flower and pet food store, a jewelry store, a veterinarian's office, a garage, etc. It is the commercial lung that has allowed Oisemont and its inhabitants to gain many businesses on the spot, somewhat at the expense of those in the city center.

We are going to use the purchased parcels to create a connection between the area and the downtown, which will be accessible to pedestrians and cyclists. The center remains dynamic, with a discount store accessible to people with reduced mobility - which moved in when the supermarket changed location -, a newspaper shop, two banks, two garages, two hairdressers, several fast food restaurants, etc.

The school and health services are also well developed

Yes, we have about 800 students, in the collège74, the private school, the Maison familiale rural and the concentrated educational grouping of 320 students, the largest in the Amiens academy.

In terms of health, we have a multidisciplinary health center with three general practitioners, a speech therapist, a midwife, six nurses and a chiropodist. There are also two town doctors, a dentist and a physiotherapist. There is a lack of a practice where specialists can consult.

You benefit from two programs to revitalize this town center, can you describe them in detail?

Indeed, we have been selected within the framework of "Small towns of tomorrow", in partnership with Airaines, and of the Region's program concerning the revitalization of town centers. The city must really be an actor: we intend to use both to work on engineering.

A study reveals that Oisemont has potential in the areas of crafts, trade, housing, security... The new dynamization of the city center would be based on real estate acquisitions for trade (cheese factory, delicatessen, haberdashery, shoemaking...).

The revitalization also involves parking management and the securing of the town center. That of the bypass is the responsibility of the department. We have not yet found our project manager for the "Small town of tomorrow" program, but we are hopeful because we have received several applications. This recruitment is done with the CC2SO to benefit from their fine expertise and the mayor of Airaines because for this program, we form a binomial. One of the orientations could be tourism, with for example the continuation of the green way in the commune then towards Gamaches. We really have to take advantage of this because the aid is important for these two programs. And the city also has a local art museum which is not well known and yet it is really good!

Your town hall is getting a makeover...

We had to do some work because the wedding hall was not accessible to people with reduced mobility. Instead of putting in an elevator, we decided to borrow part of the halls to put in the wedding room and my office. What will be left of the halls will be used as a courtyard, especially for ceremonies.

The building will be heated thanks to geothermal energy, the roof and that of the halls have been redone, and the facade is being renovated. To sum up, everything has been redone from the basement to the bell tower. The work amounts to 850,000 euros but only less than 152,000 euros remain at the expense of the commune. The rest is financed by the State as part of the France Relance plan and by the Region. This beautiful town hall is the starting point for the renewal of Oisemont. We started with the town hall.

Do you have other projects?

Some streets are accident-prone because of the speed of vehicles. Draft solutions have been found, such as the installation of locks at the entrances to the villages or new parking lots.

These decisions must be validated by the Departmental Council, which owns them. The implementation will be done by us. Part of the public lighting will be replaced with LEDs for a cost, thanks to subsidies, of 27,434 euros out of a total of 125,794 euros. We will replace oil-fired boilers in several communal buildings with heat pumps in order to save energy.

The activation of the optical fiber is expected for September/October. There is a big expectation on the part of the citizens and especially the traders and craftsmen, there is a real problem of network in the business area.

We are also working on video protection. The ambition is to control the entrances and exits of the commune. On all these projects, we communicate with the citizens. We have scheduled a mid-term review meeting in July.

Source: www.picardiegazette.fr


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