Michael Green: "Working in partnership is a two way street"

There was debate at the combined Community Councils meeting in the Centre last night about Nairn missing out on public funding for projects. Cllr Michael Green had a response:

“Brian (Stewart) also said there that we’d missed out on funding. I don’t disagree with you. I know that certain officials, they rate councillors on how much capital expenditure they can get for their ward. Eighteen months ago I was very keen to see the harbour developed. Some of the plans they had were enhanced lighting, using imaginative painting to Tobermoryise the buildings. Just make it iconic from the front, it would have been a low cost solution. We could have had an enhanced Sailing Club. I started, and some folk will know where I’m going with this – I started a discussion with the Sailing Club. I actually got the Sailing Club to speak to the Kayak Club. We got everybody together. 

I then said, well NICE is set up, NICE is properly constituted. NICE is a very large body, I'm a great supporter of NICE, I’ll invite NICE to come along and assist and facilitate this development. Because there’s no point in another organisation having to go through the two year consultation period like they did. So I got NICE along. [...] We’d a very positive meeting, there was about 30 odd people there in the Sailing Club in October. NICE undertook to go away and come back before Christmas with a wish list to take it a stage forward. Well unfortunately, I'm sorry; I haven’t heard anything to date. So when you are pointing the finger at ourselves and maybe saying you’re not doing this, you’re not doing this properly. When we are working in partnership it’s a two way street.”