YOUR VIEWS: Firms must put forward traffic solutions for Inverness city centre
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Academy Street traffic plans and the Inverness Common Good Fund.
While it’s surprising and disappointing that the business community never had the proposals for the Academy Street improvement “directly put to them” (Courier 29/11/22), I do wonder what businesses’ alternative proposals are?
Some businesses’ quotes in the article were quick to point out the issues caused by the current proposal, but what is their solution?
The current high pollution and congestion generated on the street is not a welcoming sight to visitors and tourists who disembark from trains and buses to the Highland capital.
Congestion is equally neither good for economic productivity.
I therefore commend Highland Council’s Inverness area committee on trying to look at alternatives.
Yes, they should consult more widely, but they should not step back from making Inverness a greener, healthier place to work, live and visit.
James Rorison
Pinewood Court
Inverness
Public sector reform is badly needed
In Friday’s Courier we read that Scotland’s Auditor General has yet again sounded a clarion call on the dire state of public sector finances.
He states: “The problems with public sector finances pre-dates both the current cost of living crisis and the pandemic.”
He further states that: “We have commented for many years that parts of the public sector are unsustainable and in need of reform.”
All of this comes, of course, before the present day impending wave of strikes in the public sector.
The electorate’s faith in the SNP’s fitness to govern would be greatly strengthened if they expended as much interest and energy in tackling public sector reform as they do in chasing the endless fantasy of independence (a very dubious proposition in this uncertain age).
Jim Shanks
Denia
Spain
Time to change governance of Common Good
I write in reference to Charles Bannerman’s recent article, much of which I find myself in agreement with.
He refers to the abuse, or presumption, by those charged with the Common Good and their priorities of spending.
Unfortunately not many people are conversant with the history, aims and operation of the Common Good.
This innovative and entrepreneurial concept has lasted over 600 years in spite of being systematically abused and plundered by those charged with its care and operation.
In his final paragraph he touched upon the current situation where expenditure has become a political tool to support dubious or vanity projects.
Even more damaging was the recent placing of the steeple and town house into the Common Good, in the knowledge that both properties would require many millions in renovation costs.
Had these municipal properties remained the responsibility of the council, the Common Good would be much more sustainable and in a position to achieve its original purposes.
Those purposes are succinctly incorporated in the name, the Common Good.
Both of these properties, valuable as they may be as a monument to our history, are non income producing.
The council’s decision to expend almost £8 million on the town house and then act as landlord and tenant to terminate the leasing arrangement highlights the councillors’ conflict of interests.
On this occasion they forwent their role as stewards of the Common Good and indulged themselves as cost cutters for the council.
This highlights the need for the Common Good to have the protection of a non political board of trustees.
It may well be that some councillors could be trustees, as there will be occasions where the interests of the council and the Common Good are mutual. An independent board could better reflect the views of the people of Inverness and avoid the funding of projects such as public art which do not have the approval of the majority.
An independent board could be, I suggest, more discriminating, more commercial and more aware of the aims and purposes of the Common Good.
Political decisions to subsidise ventures such as Option 6 (West Link Road), golf courses, public art projects and music festivals would come under more analytical scrutiny and the sustaining of the fund would have a higher priority.
The fund has the
potential to be innovative, supportive of sustainable community initiatives as well as investing in commercially viable projects for the benefit of the community.
Time for the people of Inverness to reclaim the Common Good.
John West
Dores Road
Inverness
Sites could get 20mph limit
Highland Council has submitted a recommendation to Transport Scotland that 114 sites across the region be included as part of their National 20mph Implementation Strategy after an assessment of a total of 165 existing 30mph zones.
“I think this is definitely needed. I live out by Culloden and the street I live in is like a racing track now. That’s including the buses. It’s also used as a rat run for people. The road is not built for the amount that uses it now. Not wide enough either. It’s just getting dangerous. The road and houses were built just over 40 years ago when the road came to a dead end, but when they built the next lot of houses that’s when it all changed, when they opened up the road from the bottom of us. It’s now a dangerous fast road. Let’s hope the street I’m on comes under the new 20 zones. Badly, badly needed.” – David McIntosh, Inverness
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