West Councillor Bill Young spoke to the River CC at the meeting in the Community Centre las night (Tuesday). He reiterated the argument he presented to his West colleagues last week, which is to get the Common Good fund under local control. See here and here for further details. He said:
“This is not an attack on the Councillors, they have a very difficult job to do, but trying to square off the books for an area the size of
Later as this subject was being debated Liz said: “ I was relaxed about how the Common Good was being managed but now you’ve got a Council that is no longer run by the members it is a political council and the point that I’m trying to make here is that there’s everybody chasing budgets and it’s not going to be people aligned to areas so much. It’s going to be people aligned to political groups. I’m a political councillor but I’m just concerned that will there be the protection of the areas within the political structures[…]We’ve always been comfortable that all councillors looked after their own areas but now it is a different ball game.”
Graham Marsden said he thought Bill was right and there was an opportunity to look again and see if there are other options.
The River Councillors seemed very supportive of Billy Young’s presentation and Tommy Hogg said he wanted the matter raised at the joint Community Council meeting that will be hosted on the 31st in the Academy by Suburban CC.
This observer wonders if Oor Graham will now also call for no sale of any Sandown land until the Common Good is back in Nairn control? Or will it simply be platitudes all the way to the ballot box?
Whilst the land area of the Highlands may be large, the number of people is relatively small, and is is people who generate/cost money. I don't find this a very substantial argument for claiming local control of common good land however desirable that may be
ReplyDelete