LTCCP nearing end
Friday, 2 June 2006
This month sees the end of the first full Long Term Council Community Plan undertaken by this council and community. The LTCCP sets the direction we will be taking for the next ten years and also includes some longer-term projects that are scheduled to be progressively developed over a much longer period than that. As a council, we still have many more meetings and debates to go before we finalise the Plan and adopt it on 28th June. By law, the Plan must be adopted by 30th, so there is no leeway for anyone who wishes to derail the process.
Yesterday, we started on LTCCP discussions at 8.45am, with a workshop. Many of the issues we must set direction and budgets for are complex and these workshops are a necessary step in ensuring that all councillors understand the issues and can, hopefully, then make informed decisions. We continued on through and then met again at 2pm for a meeting of the Environment and Planning/LTCCP Committee. This meeting was scheduled to run from 2pm until 4pm, but instead went on through until we broke for dinner then resumed for the rest of the evening. If people in the public gallery thought that we all appeared to be tired by 8.45pm - we were. We had been going solidly for 12 hours by then!
At 9.55pm, with debate still raging, the decision was made to extend the meeting until 10.30pm. There were a few voices dissenting, but the majority voted to extend the meeting, so it went on. By this time all the decisions had been made and debate was centred over issues such as what wording should be used in responses to ward committees. At 10pm, I gave up and left. Whether my leaving was a catalyst, or whether some paused for a moment to consider how much time was being wasted, I don’t know, but the meeting concluded exactly 3 minutes after my departure.
I hope that the decisions made will prove to have been wise ones, but I really do not believe that people can be thinking clearly and using their best judgement over such important matters when they have been in debate for thirteen and a quarter hours. That was one very long, hard day with a great deal of contentious debate. Fortunately for us all, the Environment and Planning Committee has excellent chairmanship in Alison Wall. If that meeting had been chaired by some of the others, we may still be there now.
