Thank you very much for your recent submission on the on-line petition at about the recent changes to the signage from Ballindalloch to Inveravon.
Following the well attended, albeit moderately short, extraordinary general meeting held at Inveraven School on Wednesday 23rd May commencing @ 19:30 it was overwhelmingly voted that the recent changes to the road signage be reverted back to Ballindalloch.
Thank you all for your support it was, and will remain, very much appreciated
If possible we will obtain a copy of the minutes from the meeting; these will be posted to this web site as soon as they become available.
Ballindalloch is back thank you
Minutes from the Special General Meeting held on 23/05/2007
There was a note included stating (written by the secretary) with one slight ammendment, quite why (written by the secretary) was mentioned and what the slight ammendment was is not known.
A short but vociferous Special Open Meeting of the Glenlivet and Inveravon Community Association was held at Inveravon School on the evening of 23 May 2007 to discuss the controversial Inveravon signs on the A95. Some 45 people 'signed in' as attending but probably twice that number packed the school hall. Chair of the Community Association John Shewan opened the meeting and explained that its purpose was to discuss the one issue only - therefore there was no reading of the minutes of the last meeting. He gave a resume of how the present situation had been arrived at. Ballindalloch signs had been erected in 2003 for road safety reasons. Community members living in Inveravon questioned the positioning of the signs and BEAR Scotland were approached in 2004.
By March 2005 BEAR were still saying there were no plans to relocate the signs. However, discussion of the matter continued at Community Association meetings and also expanded into the question of replacing the name Ballindalloch with Inveravon. Negotiations with BEAR continued for some 18 months. In September 2006 a formal request was made for re-positioning and re-naming and this was reported on at the open meeting of January 2006 when no objections were raised. Thus this was not a decision made unilaterally by the committee but was ratified in public. After the signs had been in place for some three weeks a campaign was started to get them changed back again.
The Chair explained that every resident of Glenlivet and Inveravon was a member of the Community Association. Recognising that not everyone was able to attend meetings every effort was made to publicise the work of the Association. The minutes of meetings were placed in Ballindalloch and Tomnavoulin shops, e-mailed to everyone on the Chairman's extensive list, reported on in the THISTLEdown Newspaper and posted in full on their web site. He regretted that the objectors had not felt able to pursue the normal process and bring their concerns to the next meeting and request a vote so that the matter could be resolved amicably. There had been no need for a high profile media approach which he felt showed the community in a poor light and, erroneously, as one in conflict.
He then invited Neil Meldrum, as a prominent leader of the objectors to state his case. Mr. Meldrum said everything he had heard so far was just rubbish, he had a petition with over 500 signatures and he demanded an immediate vote. This brought cheers and clapping from the audience. More measured objections came from Eric Weddell who emphasised what he felt had been a lack of consultation, from the factor for Ballindalloch Estate, who touched on commercial considerations, and from others present who sited common usage and Ballindalloch featuring on milestones.
The Secretary, Rita Marks, totally rejected allegations of lack of transparency. From her contacts with other Community Councils and Associations she knew that Glenlivet and Inveravon had an enviable reputation for community attendance at meetings and no other area in Northeast Scotland went to such lengths to circulate the minutes. There was a comment that the item on Ballindalloch signs was often only referred to briefly in the minutes and the reader would have to go back to earlier reporting to understand the issue. She accepted that this was a valid point. However, the minutes were already extremely long and where there was nothing new to report it was usual to keep details brief. She would bear this in mind in future where an issue might prove controversial - but until the recent campaign there had been no indication that this matter was so regarded.
Neil Meldrum repeated his call for an immediate vote and, the meeting becoming increasingly noisy, the Chairman put the matter to a vote, the motion being that the signs be changed to read 'Ballindalloch'. There were no votes against and four abstentions, therefore the motion was carried virtually unanimously.
The Chairman said he would contact BEAR to get this decision implemented and report back to the next Community Association meeting on 25 July 2007 at The Braes Hall. He then declared the meeting closed.
As is often the way with meetings, after it had officially ended, some suggestions for adaptations and compromises were raised but the Chairman insisted that the vote had been taken and the matter was now closed.
