“John, unfortunately has decided to step
down as a community councillor. I tried to persuade him to change his mind and
I’ve written and thanked him for all the work he’s done because he’s got a
tremendous amount of work, a lot of his own time and I very much will miss him
because he’s always been a sounding board if you needed someone to chat to. He
will be extremely missed.
Treasurer Alastair McDonald, agreeing with
the sentiment expressed by Debbie, then said: “It was John that approached me
to join the community council and it is a loss not to have John around and I
think that what we as a committee talked about was that the heart went out of
it for him with the planning. Not the planning process but when all the
applications that had been turned down went to the review committee and he
felt… and he went along representing the community council…
Debbie then intervened and said: “Well he
felt extremely let down by the Council.”
John was then praised by another NECC
member Barry Butcher who said: “He did try to get democracy and he felt that
really it was just fait accompli and that’s it.”
Debbie went on to say that a lot of
community councillors are disillusioned with the whole planning system. She
said: “We’re trying to do our best, we’re not paid for what we do and it would
be nice if sometimes somebody listened to us because we are not doing this for
the good of our health and we are not raising objections for fun. We’re here
seriously trying to help the community and the area. […] John feels like that,
the rest of us feel exactly the same but he’s just had enough all together.”
Then looking to the future she made a
further statement: “Hopefully, when planning is going forward now, they’re maybe
going to listen to us more, what we’ve got to say because I think I can say
that the other community councils as well, from now on we all will be working
together.”
No comments:
Post a Comment