Tablets back on the agenda for Highland councillors
A plan to switch to paperless agendas and save more trees has failed to win the backing of Highland Council’s oldest member.
Councillor John Ford, (82), is against moves to ditch paper and said he could never become a smart-phone convert.
The former UK President of the Institute of Diesel and Gas Turbine Engineers, who retired in 1990 as a group manager with the Hydro Electric Board, said the council’s latest green scheme would not be getting his support.
"The situation is that I am an engineer by profession and this thing about climatic control, well I just don’t believe in that at all," he said.
"I know that as far as the council is concerned we do need to make savings and some difficult choices but I think paper is needed to put things on a more permanent record and as far as I am concerned I would not be voting for that."
The proposals, which will go before the resources committee tomorrow (Wednesday), are set out in an official report, which reveals the cost of cutting the council’s carbon footprint has run nearly half a million pounds into the red.
Councillors will learn the energy management budget has an overspend of £464,000.
In his report to committee, Stewart Fraser, head of corporate governance, said the move to paperless agendas could save £28,000 every year.
However, councillors must approve one-off spending of £53,000 over the next two years on electronic tablets and keyboards for councillors to go paperless.
if committee members back the plan they will face a further two options. They can either elect to use a single tablet device supplied by the council at a cost £668-per-person - or agree to use their own.
An initial trail of tablet devices involving councillors and officers is underway.
In 2012/13 the Council printed and distributed over 1,029,000 pages of papers to support meetings of the council, its committees, joint boards, arms’ length companies and associated bodies.
The cost of printing and distributing these papers was approximately £28,000, being made up primarily of printing costs of £23,500, materials of £400 and postage costs of £4000.
* What do you think? Should the council move to paperless agendas to make the savings?