Reply from John Edmondson - 29th Jan '08

Peter


You will find a summary of the meeting on the ACWSC website on the Public Meeting page.

This is what I hold in the ACC's records. It is a fair summary of the meeting.

If you have any further questions regarding this I suggest you get in touch with either Jeremy or Matt directly as they will be able to help you with all the necessary detail.

I have received my ballot paper it seems to contain all the requirements which came from the public meeting namely:

To ask whether people want a community woodland or they do not want one.
How keen they are if they want one.
To state a preference on four different woodlands (it was originally only one).
To state a preference for ownership or co-management.

There are not two chances to say yes, the opposition or support is in question 1 this is the same as a yes or no question, the shading is not confusing, I do not believe the ballot paper is designed to skew any result, but to ascertain how much real support for community woodland there is, neither do I believe it is fundamentally flawed. So yes I do disagree with you.

The Council are not supervising the ballot count for this options ballot, if you recall there was some discussion with the Council regarding this who were prepared to run it as a training exercise until the intervention of Maxine Smith. The Council will supervise the most important ballot which is a vote in the community as to whether to purchase a particular woodland where there are strict conditions to be met for the funders.

You seem to be concerned that somehow the ballot is being skewed. It would not be in the interest of the Woodland Sub-committee to do this. Any woodland chosen must have the support of the community, both in a vote and in practical help. There is no point in pursuing a purchase/co-management of a woodland if it either does not have the support of the community or the offer of practical help. This is what the ballot is designed to try and establish. There are three main possible outcomes to the ballot:

1. The community rejects the idea of community woodland

In which case the idea of community woodland does not proceed

2. The community votes in favour of a particular woodland
In which case a Charitable Limited Company is formed to draw up a business plan whose members are made up of all Ardross residents over 18. This would be completely separate to the Community Council.

3. No clear demonstration of a particular woodland, or borderline support for community woodland.

The path taken if this is the case is less clear cut and would depend very much on the offers of practical support offered at this ballot stage. If it was decided to go ahead then again a Charitable Limited Company would be set up as 2.

Of course all this would depend on practical support from the community if this is not forthcoming then the feeling at the meetings has been that it will be difficult to go on.

As you can see from this outline then the Community Council's involvement is drawing to a close in any case, either with the setting up of a Charitable Company or the lack of commitment from the community.

I have stuck with the community woodland which has not been a very pleasant experience, because I believe as Secretary of the Community Council I should do everything in my power to ensure the community has a chance to decide whether they want community woodland, whether or not it is the wood I personally want (which happened to be Kildermorie). I believe this ballot is the next step to achieving this.

You of course have had the opportunity to attend all the subsequent community woodland meetings, since the public meeting you have chosen not to.


Regards
John

Reply from Jeremy Spurway following a demand from Peter Allen that he and Matt Stevenson should attend the next Ardross Community Council Meeting to answer his questions - 4th Feb 2008:

Peter,

as you are aware, John has kindly passed on your somewhat peremptory request that Matt and I attend the next community council meeting.

I am afraid that I unable to commit myself to attending but am able to offer the following in response to your queries, which you are welcome to share with the remainder of the community council.

The essence of the discussion at the meeting of the 15/10/07 was that the ballot should separate the options into three distinct issues, namely 1) support or otherwise for community woodland per se, 2) ranked preference of the four top-scoring woods, and 3) favoured management arrangement.

In considering the clearest manner in which to present these issues, and in response to George's comments at the meeting regarding actual uptake of facilities, we thought it prudent to further separate 'support' from 'active support'. Since this in no way detracts from the specific issues identified at the public meeting, and clearly adds to the value of the ballot exercise, I struggle to see why you would fail to discern this for yourself, especially in the light of the expansive supporting material enclosed with the ballot papers, in which we have taken pains to explain each of the options. I assume that you have taken the time to read this, preferably twice, as it is doubtless easy to skim without fully comprehending the content.

The target date for returning ballot papers is mid-February, and the group will convene to determine the response as soon thereafter as we can arrange a mutually convenient time, but we will remain flexible in order to accommodate our members' other commitments. I should imagine that the 'returning officer', as you put it, will be Matt or myself; we will inform the community council of the outcome at the earliest opportunity, and I imagine that the easiest method of disseminating the results further will be via the community newsletter and the website. Obviously, the outcome of the ballot itself determines whether there is a next step in the process, and what it might be.

May I suggest, should you have any further queries, that you pass them directly to Matt or myself, as this will allow us to respond as urgently as we may. At this point, and in Matt's defence, I should admit that he was waiting on me to review the minutes before passing them to yourself. Whilst I appreciate that some three-and-a-half months have passed since the meeting, you will know yourself how difficult it can be to keep up-to-date with these things. I assume that Matt sent the minutes that you requested to both yourself and John simultaneously, but in case you have still not received
them, I have attached them to this email as well.

I'd like, if I may, to finish with a question of my own: are the queries you raise your own, or the community council's? If the latter, perhaps you could furnish me with the minutes from the meeting where the ballot was discussed and a resolution taken to summon Matt and myself; if it is the former, then I invite you to raise any future issues via the website's guestbook so that we can make any response public. In keeping with this, we will endeavour to update the website with both your queries and the response I've given above, as we would not wish for anyone to labour under the impression that the group is doing otherwise than to determine the community's woodland aspirations, whatever they may be, to the best of our limited abilities and in a disinterested, inclusive, and transparent manner.

Jeremy

would like to join in and help will be calling again for more info

You would be very welcome to get involved, you can do this by contacting us - visit the contacts page to see the various means of doing this. You can also attend our meetings which are held twice monthly - on the first and third monday of every month. The next meeting is on 20th August, we hope to see you there!