Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser
Why waste £27k on consultations we didn’t need?
I hope all of the Advertiser’s readers have a happy and healthy 2018.
I would like to congratulate Monklands parents for their successful campaign against the school transport proposals.
These proposals should never have seen the light of day, and the Labour group should be ashamed of themselves for bringing them forward.
The safety aspect itself should have been enough to keep things as they are.
Why did they hold the consultations in the first place? Everyone knew what the result would be, so why, when we need as much money as we can get, do we waste almost £27,000 on these consultations?
The Tories can’t escape criticism either. When the vote was taken to go ahead or not, they could have stopped both consultations taking place by supporting the motions by the SNP group, which was not to go ahead with the primary and secondary proposals.
Then, at the council meeting last month, we again tried to stop the consultations, but again received no support from the Tories or the independents.
We have been accused of playing politics with young children’s safety; nothing could be further from the truth as we are the only group on the council who have been against these proposals from the beginning, therefore supporting the children’s safety.
Although there is no doubt this is a great victory for the parents, judging by the number of letters we received from them and other relatives and reading the content of the letters, we are aware this has been a time of great worry and stress.
There is also no doubt it could have been prevented.
Another issue I had hoped may have been better by this time is the one concerning bin collections.
Last Sunday I was horrified to see a photograph of overflowing bins, and lots of rubbish on the deck, in parts of North Lanarkshire outwith Monklands.
I am also aware of problems in my own area, where bins in one part of the ward had been lying un-emptied since before Christmas.
This all stems from early October when the new system was introduced, and the way it was introduced is the main reason why some of the problems are still there today.
Apart from the complaints I have mentioned, councillors are still receiving a number of others concerning the bins.
I am aware the staff and management are doing their best, but we still appear to be a bit away from correcting all of the problems.
Over the next few weeks we will be working on the budget, which we will be presenting to council at the budget meeting on February 23.
It will be interesting, on this occasion, to see if all three political groupings will present a budget and, of course, which one will ultimately succeed.