Would an alliance of Nairnshire, Croy and
Ardersier make more sense than the current plan Highland Council has to herd us
into a Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey area committee? This observer would go as
far to suggest that that, in the not too distant future, could be one of a
series of potential outcomes from a meeting planned of all the Nairnshire
Community Councils plus Croy and Ardersier.
At the Suburban Community Council meeting
last night in the Academy Dick Youngson gave details of the next meeting of the
councils, he said:
“We’ve been asked to set up another meeting
of the seven, and now eight community councils. To again discuss what are our
requirements and what are we to do about Nairn and everything that has been
taken away from Nairn. Because really if we don’t get it right at this stage, and
set up clear sort of ideas we’re going to lose out as a result of a shrinking
budget. Because Highland Council and all the other Councils are in extreme
difficulty at the moment. I think the auditors are looking very keenly at a lot
of the cash which has gone out to different organisations and been used in all
the Council areas. So really things are going to get tighter than we ever
imagined and yet we haven’t really had our fair share of cash and allowance and
I think we again should get together.
We’re going to include Ardersier this time
because they felt left out. We had Croy and Cawdor and East Nairnshire which is really
Glenferness and Lethen and Roger Milton (Auldearn) and out three Community
Councils here. It went down quite well and we discussed a lot. It’s going to be
an open meeting, we’re not going to have a small contingent from each Community
Council. It’ll be open and we’re really going to tackle all the issues that
we’re going to lose if we don’t speak up now.
Dick then discussed potential dates for the meeting Weeks commencing Monday 22nd April or 6th May seemed to suit best, he went on:
“This isn’t the same as the three Nairn
Community Councils getting together, this is a much larger. It’s Ward 19
together with the Councillors and part of Ward 18 or most of it.
Because Croy feel completely left out as do
Ardersier. So if we can actually get together and debate keenly what is
required and how we can perhaps put up a decent case for a form of thinking and
management…there’s been quite a lot of discussion with senior members of
Highland Council over the last few weeks. There’s quite a lot of support and
interest from them for this. So we are not going against Highland Council this
actually takes us forward along with Government thinking and what Highland
Council can perhaps achieve with us as partners.
It isn’t as if we are going to give
ourselves a heap more work, we are still going to exist as a Community Council.
That’s our responsibility; we’re not changing the Community Councils. It’s just
that we will be free then to set up as development companies and to look for
funding and to get funding through government and Highland Council. So it’ll be
channelled in a slightly different manner. Unless we speak up we are going to
lose out all the way along.”
More on this initiative/discussion later this week in
the Gurn.
1 comment:
Folk I've talked with in Grantown have always thought themselves linked more to Aviemore and Inverness rather than Nairn
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