Minutes for Council meeting, Jan 27 2011, 6.30PM official page

Members and Officers are requested to give notice of any personal or prejudicial interest and the nature of that interest, relating to any item on the agenda in accordance with the relevant Code of Conduct.

Minutes of the meeting held on 16 December 2010

To deal with matters raised by members of the public within the Borough, in accordance with the procedures relating to Petitions, Public Questions.and Motions set out in the Council and Committee Procedure Rules.

 

A petition with 3,329 signatures has been submitted objecting to the proposed closure of the Botanic Gardens Nursery operation (see attached note) and Mr S.D.Taylor, the organiser of the petition will be permitted to speak for a period of up to five minutes at the meeting, to speak in support of the petition.

 

(Details of any other Petitions notified or Questions submitted by members of the public in accordance with Rule 11 will be circulated at the meeting).

To receive and consider questions to Cabinet Members, Chairs of Committees or Spokespersons for any of the Joint Authorities upon any matter within their portfolio/area of responsibility, of which notice has been given in accordance with Rule 12 of the Council and Committee Procedure Rules.

Report of the Monitoring Officer

Report of the Strategic Director - Social Care and Wellbeing

Report of the Assistant Chief Executive

Report of the Chief Executive

Joint report of the Planning and Economic Development Director and Neighbourhood and Investment Programmes Director

To consider any changes to the Membership of any committees etc.

To consider the following Motion submitted by Councillor Sir Ron Watson:

 

"This Council:

 

Supports the Prime Minister in his opposition to the introduction of an Alternative Voting (AV) system;

 

Believes that AV is an unfair system that unduly complicates the electoral process and gives fringe parties several votes whilst supporters of mainstream candidates have one vote only;

 

Considers that as there are only three countries in the world using AV – Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Australia, this hardly represents an endorsement of the system by the international community;

 

Agrees with the Deputy Prime Minister, who has described AV voting as "a miserable little compromise" and with the late Lord Jenkins of Hillhead who has described AV as "disturbingly unpredictable”; and

 

Believes that introducing such a system in the UK would further alienate the general public from the democratic process and considers that Sefton should restate its commitment to "first past the post".

To consider the following Motion submitted by Councillor Sir Ron Watson:

 

"This Council considers that the representations from Unison to the effect that there is an important financial issue in relation to school balances needs to be addressed and suggests that as the balances in Sefton schools is now in excess of £12 million, the Coalition Government should be urged to consider ways in which these amounts can be used possibly through more advantageous lending arrangements to alleviate the financial pressure on Sefton Council and on its service provision.

 

The Council support any moves in a pragmatic manner by Unison on both a local and national basis to help secure this flexibility.

 

On a local basis the Council will work with Unison and the schools in a constructive manner to identify service areas where the schools could reasonably be expected to meet the costs currently borne by all Council taxpayers from their own resources."