Chairman's Report AGM 2010

CHAIRMAN’S REPORT

For Annual General Meeting on 19th April 2010

In direct contrast with my report to last year’s AGM this past year has been influenced by a lack of members on the Community Council. It is good to have Colin Craig back in regular attendance but his efforts to adequately represent the Mulbuie area at our meetings and the Ward 9 Forum meetings is hampered by the lack of support. With only 9 members it doesn’t take much in the way of holidays and illness to reduce our effectiveness. Interestingly the latest proposals for a new Constitution suggest that given our population we need only 8 members to adequately represent this area and whether we continue to aim for each area to be separately represented remains to be discussed.

The Highland Council Ward system continues to work well and although I personally find the timings of the Ward Forum Meetings inconvenient those that I have attended have been interesting and the general impression seems that the Community Councillors and public are finding them beneficial. My thanks are extended to Di Agnew and Liz Cowie for their support to our activities and concerns.

Our Environment Group generates interest with its out door events, the results of which can be viewed on our website, and a long-standing project, the creation of a footpath along the southern bank of the River Conon on the outskirts of Conon Bridge towards Alcaig has now reached the construction phase.

The Community Market continues to attract attention and support thanks largely to the efforts of Kirsty Shaw and her valiant small band of volunteers of whom, Andy Scott deserves special mention. We submitted an entry into the Highlands & Islands Food & Drink Awards 2009 sponsored by Williamson Foodservice and although we were short-listed were unsuccessful but had the pleasure of seeing one of our regular stall holders winning an award.

The Community newsletter the “Noticeboard” continues to attract praise and we are grateful to the volunteers who distribute it for us. We have recently been able to extend our coverage in the Mulbuie area which hopefully will attract some interest in our affairs. Our thanks go to our Editor, Carol Elliot, for her consistent achievement of a well balanced issue and to Jean Hogben who, after successfully organising the distribution, has now handed over to Ken Watson. It will only continue to be successful if suitable articles are made available.

The Noticeboard on the Culbokie Shop is still as popular as ever and by setting up a set of rules governing the size of notices we have avoided the need for an extra or bigger one. Unfortunately it has recently attracted the attention of vandals.

We should be soon be seeing the public announcement of the mechanism for claiming funds from the Fairburn Wind Farm. We failed in our attempt to make Scottish and Southern Energy to see sense on the distribution of funds and had to accept that our only benefit of £10000 was going to be due from the ‘disturbance’ of the turbine parts travelling along the A9 and the A835 through our area. How many of us, I wonder, felt that we were so inconvenienced that £10000 was a suitable sweetener. What must upset those who don’t like seeing the turbines is the fact that we receive no compensation at all for an area that has possibly the highest visual impact of these turbines. This Community Council will be asked to judge the worthiness of any applications for some of the £10000 from organisations in out area. Perhaps given the controversy over the distribution and siting of wind farms and how they can divide communities it is time for Highland Council to ‘own’ the turbines and plough the money back into the budget. All we would then have to do is to hope that they don’t misuse the money.

There has been no progress made on the development of the Culbokie Post Office car park and given the number of potholes that effect a significantly larger number of us than the car park I feel that we will have to be patient. However, we were delighted to see the installation of a larger capacity post box in time for the Christmas postal rush.

We still await developments at the old Primary School both for its future conversion and the outcome of the Planning Application for a controversial design of flats and in general house planning matters have been relatively quiet with developers obviously taking their time due to the financial climate. We are currently have applications from Norwood Homes at Mount Eagle phase 2, Cairn Housing and Moray Developments east of Schoolcroft, and a few ‘single’ house applications.

I consider it to have been a successful year and I wish to thank all the Highland Councillors for taking the time to attend our meetings and for their support and advice.

I also wish to thank all my fellow Councillors for their help through out the year, at our meetings and in subgroups and for ensuring our events were successful, and especially to Ann Acock who has continued to carry out the time consuming work of both Secretary and Treasurer whilst trying to keep me in order.