By Councillor Marc Macrae:
As Moray councillors count down the days till the budget setting meeting on 27th February, many hours of work has gone into exploring every avenue for cost savings and the protection of key services across the area.
On Tuesday of this week (19th) at a Group Leaders meeting some options were discussed with no fixed agreement made, as groups quite rightly had to discuss them with the members not present.
On Thursday (21st) the papers for the full council meeting were issued after lunchtime, showing libraries will close, Gollachy recycling centre will close etc.
Following their issue, meetings were held by my colleagues with senior management of the council, further ideas were developed to retain the library in Tomintoul, to delay the closure of the Gollachy facility, reduce the increase in leisure harbour fees and further restructure the music tuition servicewhich when run past the Head of Legal Services and the Head of Finance were deemed to be competent and given that assurance were then issued to all the councillors for their consideration, with my group following the convention of issuing any budget amendment 3 working days before the meeting, a timescale confirmed to us by our Head of Legal Services.
Frankly I should not have been surprised to learn mid-afternoon Friday (22nd February) that the SNP now decide these are their ideas and they wish to save these facilities now.
It would have been nice if in the spirit of openness and transparency that this information had been shared with the other elected members of Moray Council, but I learnt these changes from discussions with media representatives who have been advised of them before elected members had been told.
Whilst all efforts to retain key services are to be applauded this is a very clear demonstration of the underhand tactics of the SNP Council group.
