After a very long day today, Deputy Leader Ellen Morton proposed a motion to sell Castle Toward at value [£1.75 million] – with a commercial loan of £1m deferred for 3 years.
This motion was proposed despite the fact that the paper before the Policy and Resources Committee showed the South Cowal Community Development Company’s [SCCDC] cash flow forecast clearly demonstrating that they they would not be able to afford a commercial loan; and certainly not in the first years of their ownership of a property in very poor condition.
Dunoon Councillor Michael Breslin put up an Amendment to the Motion, proposing the property be sold to SCCDC at £750k – which is within the spectrum of Savills estimated sale value.
The vote at the meeting was 9-5 against the Amendment, so the Motion carried.
SCCDC is to be offered Castle Toward on a sale price of £1.75 million, with a commercial loan of £1 million deferred for three years.
This is unaffordable for the community company.
Councillor Breslin is asking: ‘Why would the administration put up sale conditions they know from the outset cannot be acceptable to the community bidder?
In our view this is no better than stunting.
Such a loan could be no different from students loans – highly unlikely to be payable and virtually unenforcecable.
Supposing the SCCDC twisted its fingers behind its corporate back and accepted this ‘offer’?
Three years down the road, they can’t pay.
The council gives them another three years.
They can’t pay.
Are we seriously likely to see the council force a local community development company into administration? With the loss of local jobs and damage to the local economy community ownership is designed to grow?
Of course not.
So why play these witlessly sophist games to make themselves look as if they’re business savvy? If they were, Argyll’s economic plight would not be as it is. And this is the motley crew that hold conferences and utter pieties about addressing Argyll’s depopulation crisis.
They may think they’ve pulled a smart one tonight – looking like they want to sell to the community and at the same time making it impossible for the community to buy.
In fact they look exactly as everyone knows them to be.
And Dunoon Councillor James MacQueen, famous for having no idea what a vote is about and just saying: ‘I support Dick’ – did it again, voting against the community which is in his ward.