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Minute of the meeting held on Monday 18 November 2002 at 7.30pm in Maryculter Community Hall.
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Agenda |
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Present |
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Apologies |
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Absent |
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Minutes |
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Next Meetings |
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Maryculter |
Netherley |
Banchory Devenick |
Aberdeenshire Councillors |
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3 members of the public
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Kate Kleppang |
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Alan Bisset |
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Fiona Culbert had tendered her resignation, which
was regretfully accepted. We wish her well in her move to Lumphanan. |
1. |
1. MINUTES of the meeting of 21st October were approved after the following amendment re The Golf Driving Range :- Bill reported to the Rights of Way Society that we had after due consideration declined to provide funds for a review by a QC. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
2. |
Matters Arising |
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Rural Schools Closure |
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Philip had,as mandated, sent a summary of the NKRCC comment to Aberdeenshire
Council, and copied it to local councillors and the 3 School Boards. The
Local Authority had not passed these on to councillors. Sandy answered
queries regarding the survey of opinions. He also mentioned that the area
was not typical as the average number of children in families in the area
was higher than the norm (with non indigenous families working in the
Oil Industry). He does not believe the Council has the Housing projection
correct. Rob asked if Sandy would raise that point at the Council Meeting
on the 21st. Sandy said he would concentrate on other salient points as
Banchory-Devenick had clearly said No. He believes that Maryculter are
nearer an agreement on two school merger, even though the vote seems split
50/50 for a three school merger. |
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Website |
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| Kevin confirmed that this was up to date, Raymond pointed out that Philip was not yet noted as Chairman.. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Roads |
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| Philip will send off a list of comments to the Roads Department. Once the problems of the B979 has been addressed we will try to achieve the same with the South Deeside Road. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Kincardine and Mearns Community Council Forum |
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| Roads Maintenance: Neil Robertson,
Network Manager for Kincardine and Mearns Transportation And Infrastructure
was first up talking about Roads Maintenance. Roads Maintenance covers carriageway (5,400km in Aberdeenshire), verges (A roads have verge and gorse cut every three years), drainage, footways (174km), signs, street lights (34,955), traffic lights, bridges and car parks. Some private road upkeep has become the responsibility of the council to upkeep but these are last in the pecking order for funding and rarely figure. This year the budget for Transportation and Infrastructure got an extra £1.5million from the Scottish Executive bringing it's total to £4 million for Aberdeenshire. This does not include the winter maintenance budget. Commercial (contracting) and client (maintenance) have merged into operations resulting in more in-house procedures. Maintenance is funded from general maintenance whilst Planned Maintenance comes from revenue or capital funding. From noting works to their be carried out in Planned Maintenance there can be a delay of 3 years. The backlog for resurfacing work is £5 million. The busier the road the faster it will be treated. Surveys are carried out every year on carriageways and every three years for footways. Some busy carriageways are inspected every three months. Complaints from the public are assessed and dealt with according to priority. Resurfacing can be Dressing - hot bitumen is sprayed on the road and covered with stone chips (10mm). This has the advantage of causing only slight disruption and is relatively cheap. However where the road is too badly damaged, or has bumps, proper Full Resurfacing has to be done, causing large disruption and a hefty price tag. Future improvements include computerised asset counting and improved communications. Phone complaints are logged and the number to ring is 01569 768455 (or 7). Winter Maintenance: Ralph Singleton, Principal Engineer (Network), Transport and Infrastructure was next up. Winter Maintenance funding uses 35% of the total roads Budget. For 2002-2003 this amounts to £4.7 million. Trunks roads are not Aberdeenshire Council's responsibility anymore, although in an emergency they would help BEAR. Kincardine and Mearns has 4 routes and gritters with 3 backup gritters. The shifts consist of three men with early standby a normal occurrence. There are three salt stores and unless the weather demands a very dense delivery of grit and or salt the lorries should be able to do their runs without backtracking to refill. Snowploughs are used to move large falls of snow. Aberdeenshire has 60 snowploughs. Extra help can be obtained from hired JCB's and farmers who are given snowploughs and paid for their time. From mid October through to April information comes from forecasts from the Met. Office, radar and sensors in the road which give the road temperature, air temperature, dewpoint and salinity. The colder and the wetter the weather the more salt/grit is needed. Roads are often gritted the night before a frost is expected to prevent it causing icy problems on the road. Further treatments if required are carried out from 5.30 am. During very bad weather all available personnel in Transport and Infrastructure are drafted in to help and work goes on round the clock. Roads are dealt with as follows. Priority One Routes: Principal roads serving as main routes between communities. Priority Two Routes: Principal roads serving as main routes between smaller communities, or as traffic distributors within larger communities. Priority Three Routes: Access roads to isolated communities, local access roads, service roads and minor roads in urban areas. Footpaths are divided into two priorities. The first are those in central areas of urban communities and the second are all others. Aberdeenshire has 60 footpath ploughs. Non-weather related problems have included children using the plough or gritter as a tow for bikes and sledges, and bombarding the poor chap in the pavement plough with snowballs. Update of Matters of Interest. Additional Spending Allocation from the Scottish Executive has resulted in Aberdeenshire receiving just over £4 million. Top-up Budgets are still available for projects to address local needs. Training; It would be useful to have an idea of numbers of councillors who would be interested in training sessions for office bearers. Community Planning: views on how to increase awareness of Community Planning would be welcomed. Comments on the Area Plan are invited. The plan has being updated and will be reviewed and developed in Spring. |
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3. |
Planning |
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Ardoe House |
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| application to convert Stables Cottage into Conference facility - the one way system promised by MacDonald Hotels in the Planning application has not been put in place. We will write to planning department to suggest this is now implemented, to improve safety on South Deeside Road entrance | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Proposed organic farm on the Netherley road |
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| The second application (retrospective) for siting of caravans is listed for review at the next committee meeting | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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ALP - Renewable Energy |
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| It was noted that the guidance given to local
areas committees through ALP as worded could lead to Aberdeenshire Council
potentially being unable to stop proposals for siting Wind Turbines at unsuitable
sites and over large areas. The objections to ALP in this respect of the
relevant policies were reviewed. Philip and Robert had met with Natural Power's representative regarding a proposed Wind Farm at Midhill Fetteresso - There are to be public exhibitions at drumlithie and Banchory on 2 and 3 December. |
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Blairs |
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| Rob noted that an interim report (without recommendation) may be presented to the Area Committee on Tuesday 26th, probably with a view to asking for a Special Hearing (possibly on Dec 17th) which would allow all parties to present their case. Traffic report is still being updated. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Golf Driving Range |
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| A similar interim report is due to be presented to Area Committee on the 26th. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Houses - Cookney |
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| Due to be considered on 26th - virtually certain to be approved. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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A vigorous and prolonged discussion took place on the Organic Farm application.
James insisted that whilst the application may have merit, the manner
in which the site had been occupied and serviced, etc., represented an
abuse of or evasion of the planning system and stressed that the Council
should have done something about it.
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4. |
Finance |
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| Funding Applications - Raymond reported that two applications for funding had been received. The applications and the amounts approved following discussion were as follows: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Cookney Hall - towards renewal of septic tank - £300 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Maryculter Nursery - purchase of construction kits. £111.45 granted | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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November 200 Club Draw winners
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6. |
Correspondence |
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Police report: In the absence of an officer from Grampian Police, Robert highlighted some of the key points from the written report provided in advance of the meeting including a number of road accidents and traffic violations in the area as well as a break in during which a number of items had been stolen. The police again encouraged people to report any suspicious vehicles and consider the use of timers to switch on lights in the afternoon especially when the clocks were put back. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 7. | AOCB | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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South Deeside View is in process of preparation. Raymond volunteered to cover some of the distribution at Blairs and Avril will liaise with Kevin and Janet to cover Hazel's area. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Rights of Way - Haugh of Ardoe , Bill asked what is Janet Hood doing about this and can we ask her to contact Scottish Rights of Way? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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With the resignation of Fiona we now have vacancies in each ward. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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December 9 2002 7:30 |
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January 20 2003 7:30 |
