Chair Annual Statement
Firstly thank you all for coming along tonight, and thank you to the community councillors who give up their time to sit on the council and keep it running.
It’s been a busy year, and not just in terms of leadership changes.
We started with an uphill battle — we wanted to change the perception of the community council within the community. As a team, we came up with lots of ideas and also changes in how the meetings were run. These changes made the meetings more inclusive and welcoming to members of the public, from little things such as serving refreshments to changing the running order so comments could be taken from the public gallery throughout the meeting.
Several of our ideas have either been fully implemented or are works in progress— such as pressing for the Bells project to finally begin, the start-up of a community newsletter, attending meetings and groups which affect our area (Westfield, Climate Action, Path Feasibility, Community Centre etc,) and working with the schools on initiatives such as Litter Busters.
But sadly, the one thing we’ve been unable to make much improvement on is community participation—in both attending the meetings or taking up a role within the community council. For the coming year, hopefully, we can carry on doing the good work we are doing and that we also manage to engage the community, after all our council exists for them, and we want them to be a part of it.
So, I’d like to thank you all again and I hope we can continue to work together to help our great wee community flourish and tackle any issues arising as best we can.
Debbie Doyle
Chair Benarty, Community Council
