Secretary Linda McLean

APOLOGIES. no apologies

PRESENT. L. McLean - A.Irvine - L. Gow - C.Robinson - M. Mawson - M. McNeil - R.rOBINSON.

1. PREVIOUS MINUTES
proposed by M. Mawson, seconded by A. Ievine.

2. MATTERS ARISING.

(A) We had a very poor response from the children of the community to our Xmas scene drawing competition, we had only six entries, we decided to give each of the six children who submitted entries a £15. voucher, a photographer from the wee county news was present to take pictures of the children receiving their vouchers.

(b) The secretary is still waiting to hear from Alan Gall to set a meeting for the planting of a tree, with a bench at the cemetery.

(c) The enquiry reguarding the Ochilview tenant who had problems with her rent rebate has now been resolved..

3. CORRESPONDENCE.
A sheet listing all the correspondence was circulated to all those present, and relevant matters discussed.

4. TREASURERS REPORT.
There is £556.60 in the account

5. ANY OTHER BUSINESS
(a) The community council were disappointed that they did not receive a letter reguarding the meeting in Alloa to discuss the recent rent rise.

(b) To help fund our project of creating a community web site, the chairperson has started to approach local businesses for cash donations which will buy domain names and web space for those clubs and organisations that can not afford to buy their own, in return the web master will put a link from the community web site to the business web site if they have one, if they do not have one the web master will make them a site and train them to update it so that they can take over the running of their own web site,the firm Alan Grant solicitors who have an office in tron court Tullibody generously donated £100. to the project,they do have their own web site and a link has been placed to it from the community site

(c) Due to the continuing problems with the new internet service provider (Supanet)which have led to the secretary having to phone them constantly to try and resolve the connection problems, her phone bill showed a large increase, it was decided to give her £9. towards her bill.

(d) The community council are very concerned about the lack of police cover for our community, to illustrate this concern we give you one instance which we feel must be happening to other people reporting matters to the police.

the chairperson is also an area co-ordinator for the Braes and Banchory residents association neighbourhood watch scheme, recently he had reported to the police on three occasions youths vandalising Banchory primary school, on these three occasions the police never attended, being concerned about this, the chairperson e-mailed police headquarters in Stirling for an investigation bay a senior officer as to why there was no response from the police.

Inspector Miller and sergeant Thomson visited the chairperson to inform him why calls from the public reporting vandalism and crimes were not being pursued, and the reasons given can not be listed in these minutes, but are very disturbing, the chairperson brought the matter up at a meeting of the Braes and Banchory residents association and after discussion it was decided to send letters to both our MP and MSP stating our concerns, below is a copy of the letter sent by the Braes and Banchory residents association.

RE: PUBLIC SAFETY AND CRIME DETECTION AND PREVENTION.

We write to you on behalf of our community to express our concern about the apparent unacceptable levels of police officers available to attend to public safety and related matters within the central Scotland / forth valley area.

Our neighbourhood watch schemes report that often police officers are regularly unavailable to attend when criminal offences are being witnessed and reported to our local stations, this is noted particularly at the peak risk times of evenings and weekends.

Friends and neighbours who have relatives in the police force are also reporting that levels of police officers on duty at any time are now at an alarmingly low level. We are concerned that not only are law abiding citizens becoming more aware of this fact, but offenders themselves are learning that the likelihood of being "caught in the act" or "after the act" is minimal due to the shortage of police officers to attend to scenes of crime. This of course, is encouraging them to take more risks in the belefe that they will not be "caught".

Our request is that this is investigated at a higher level and action taken to ensure the police force has sufficient resources to provide the level of service required to ensure public safety is not at risk. With the increasing statistics illustrating the amount of offenders who are addicted to drugs and alcohol and recidivist rates rising dur to their behaviour, communities and parents in particular are reticent to allow their children to play out with the home. Community living is being eroded and households are becoming insular in an attempt to reduce these fears of offences being committed against individuals or property.

We would hope that you could table our concerns for discussion on the appropriate agenda and provide some assurance that resources will be provided to our local police forces, to allow them to protect our communities from crime and reinstate public confidence.

The community council will also send letters to our MP and MSP on this matter and hopefully a solution will be found to remedy the situation.

There being no other business the chairman thanked everyone for attending and closed the meeting.

DATE OF NEXT MEETING

30th April in Tullibody civic centre at 7pm.