Another well-attended meeting tonight in the Community Centre as West hosted colleagues from River and Suburban in a joint meeting. Sitting at the top table were Jimmy Ferguson, Brian Stewart, Seonaid Armstrong and Rosemary Young for West with Stephanie Whittaker and John Dolan for River and of course not forgetting, John MacKie, John Hart and Dick Youngson for Suburban. Murd Dunbar summed up the feeling of the meeting when he stated from the public benches how pleased he was to be able to attend a joint meeting as that meant he wouldn’t have to go round all of them to give them the latest update on his Firhall Bridge correspondence.
The main body of the meeting got down to the nitty-gritty of many important issues that are on the local radar at the moment. There was more debate on the Lodgehill Clinic flats (39 objections in on the Highland Council e-planning site now).
The meeting also heard about the town centre issue and the Community Councils’ involvement with NICE. There was a bit of debate about the ‘rival?’ South Nairn proposals before the meeting moved onto Sandown issues and here, many forthright views were expressed. The members of the public then heard comments about the Community Council review (see the gurn side bar poll for Gurnite views on the subject), there was an interesting analogy made; what sort of car will we get and what will the upholstery look like? Will Highland Council decide both?
John Mackie spoke about the local community care forum and its forthcoming demise – did local councillors even know about this or did it simpy.come from the officials?
West are looking for two co-opted members one with voting rights and one non-voting member, they will advertise in the Nairnshire for potential members. The meeting then closed and seasonal fare was on offer in the form of mulled wine and mince pies. A nice time was had by all.
Hopefully we will have time to expand on some of these news items over the next few days, we also have more to come from Monday’s NICE meeting if time permits.
Do the new members get elected,or do they just muck in.?
ReplyDeleteThere are elections once every five years but members can be co-opted as well.
ReplyDeleteThis observer wants to see a single CC for Nairn which would mean a new election being held once it were set up.
Great to see the three CCs meeting together however, that is the next best thing to a town council so let's hope we see a lot more of that whatever happens with the review of Community Councils that is taking place at the moment.