The Chair of the Council may be minded to allow requests using his constitutional discretion as Chair at this meeting.
Members of the public are asked to submit questions and/or statements by 5pm 3 clear working days in advance of the meeting as usual. You may register to speak without submitting a question and this must be done by 4pm the day before the meeting. Questions and/or statements received in advance may be answered as part of the debate at the meeting, but no written responses to questions will be provided. However, as per the constitution, there is to be no other business conducted at extraordinary council meetings, so if questions and/or statements are not in relation to the specific agenda item of this meeting the Chair will not permit the question. Questioners will be directed to the next regularly scheduled meeting of Council as appropriate.
Minutes:
Honorary Alderman Mel Lucas
Thank you for allowing me to have a few moments of your time this evening.
You will be far more privy than I as to what you have in front of you tonight and what you're going to discuss and how you're going to discuss this in your decision. Can I, as a member of the public, an ex Member of this particular Council and a Parish Councillor for over 26 years combined, put my thoughts to you.
I must express my
opinions as I have always done in the past. We live, or so I am led
to believe in the democracy. Over the last few weeks, we have seen
many scenes that we have no longer any right to call democratic in
any shape or form and the present organisation in Westminster is
trying to do the same thing with this.
I believe fervently in democracy and that is why I served my
community for as long as I did without any thought of monetary or
any other type of reward. I just served them because I wanted to
serve them and I hope all you Councillors feel the same as I
do.
What is in front of you today takes away that right, it will take away your right to listen to the people whom you represent and who have given you the right to ask questions on their behalf. Some of those people will not do what I'm doing this evening because they don’t have the courage to do it. Councillors, you know that you represent the people who put you where you are today. Those people look upon you as the conduit between them, the Parish Council and Mid Devon, who then in turn look towards the County Council. I would hope that after I've spoken you'll see where I come from in the context that I am fearful that this is yet another little chip away of the democracy that we so dearly love.
I love it fervently.
I would have no hesitation in telling you now that if push came to
shove, then I would be pushing for all my worth to make sure that
my people, whom I represented, are still going to be
heard.
Mid Devon District Council is peculiar in the fact that it was
sprung from a borough. We then became a District Council and it was
well worth it. We made mistakes. We are human. We have made errors
in the past. We learn hopefully from those errors. If this is
allowed to go through without any fight, then we are letting our
people who are our neighbours, our friends, our colleagues at work,
or whomever, we are letting them down, we need you to still be here
next year, the year after and the year after that, because in all
seriousness, the gap between the little people and the people in
power is growing day by day, and if we don't make a decision now,
to save local democracy, then all I can say councillors is that you
may have let your people down.
Thank you most sincerely for letting me have my say as to how I feel about this because Mid Devon District Council, for all its warts, for all its faults, is exactly what we need and want and require and if you can take that message to the people who are supposedly looking after the little people, that is, those people who are at the bottom of everything, then please do so because I would fight side by side with you for the honour of making sure that Mid Devon District Council continues to do its work in the future, no matter what some of the outcome may be. Thank you, Chair.