IT was with incredulity as a yacht owner that I read your article concerning Argyll and Bute Council’s £3.1 million funding of a 100-berth transit marina in Oban bay for visiting yachts and a safe landing facility for the passengers of the 15 or so cruise ships which visit Oban annually (“£3m marina sparks jobs fear”, The Herald, May 4). This is despite the fact that ample marina berths exist in the surrounding area and the cruise lines must have carried out the necessary health and safety checks on the existing shore facilities at Oban before landing their passengers.
This proposal is going ahead despite the fact that the council’s recent budget proposals saw reductions to the social care budget with the threatend closure of several day care centres in the area, roads and infrastructure badly in need of repair, a raft of voluntary redundancies and closure of public offices after 12 noon, educations cuts which have led to one of the worst inspectorate reports on standards in Scotland, and your article yesterday highlighted the lack of affordable homes for locals and accommodation for essential workers in Tobermory, threatening the viability of some businesses, a long-standing problem throughout the area and its islands.
As to the new marina going to be full for six months of the year, I think whoever prepared the report was painting an extremely optimistic picture, for yachts only start to appear in any number around the West Coast along with the returning house martins in late April/early May and then migrate back, like the birds, to their home base late September/early October, likewise the cruise liners head off in the autumn for the warmer climes of the Mediterranean or the Caribbean. So at best the marina might see five months of reasonable visitor numbers.
At the moment our First Minister is being lambasted for not getting on with the “day job”. I think the councillors and officers who proposed this level of investment forgot their day job for an unnecessary vanity project.
The group which operates the council-owned marina in Rothesay Harbour were told that there was no funding available to replace some of the pontoons which have been place for over 10 years, so from where did £3.1m suddenly appear?
I can only hope the councillors we’ve just elected deal with the real problems facing this Area instead of spending scarce resources on pipedreams.
George McKenzie,
Rubha nan Gall, 48 Ardbeg Road, Rothesay, Isle of Bute.
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