Community comes before council meetings (From Salisbury Journal)

Community comes before council meetings

4:32pm Wednesday 15th August 2012 in Salisbury Letters

MAY I first of all through this letter thank everyone who has contacted me asking about my health. The last year has been tough, first surgery and treatment for skin cancer really knocked me back, followed by a bad accident at work that left me in a plaster cast with a broken arm for three months, unable to get about much. I am at last almost recovered.

I do not want to make excuses for my below-par attendance (Journal, July 19), and I know that almost being back to fitness, it will improve. I have to confess that I do not enjoy travelling to Chippenham for “chin-wagging” meetings that make no decisions and are just “talking shops”. I also work full time running a small building company and have always tried to get the balance right between unpaid time off work with the salary I receive. I also know that my 24-year service as a councillor has not been judged on the meetings I attend, but on the service I give my community.

Those who know me know that the people in my community come first and are far more important than any meeting, and if the dates clash and I have to choose between going to court to support a family facing eviction or supporting a family at a school exclusion meeting, then the council meeting will come second every time.

So I take the punch by cllr Clewer on the chin and congratulate him on his 100 per cent record. But I must ask, is this the same cllr Clewer who is a Wiltshire Council member of the Plas Pencelli Management Committee, who have never seen him? A 100 per cent record of non-attendance.

CLLR RICKY ROGERS Bemerton