Stirling’s provost has publicly apologised for comments made in the wake of a row over his invite to visit Florida.
Bannockburn ward independent councillor Alasdair MacPherson and the opposition SNP group had previously slammed the proposed use of up to £3000 of public money to pay for Provost Douglas Dodds to visit Dunedin in the US state next April.
But fellow Tory councillors then said Provost Dodds had already made his mind up not to make the trip to Dunedin, which has decades old links with Stirling, due to the cost to the taxpayer.
Costings for the trip - including flights, hotel stays and expenses - were included in papers drawn up by council officials for a civic panel meeting but they withdrew the paper given the provost’s decision, leaving panel members with no decision to make.
Provost Dodds told the panel at the time: “The reason I’m not going to Dunedin is a personal choice.
“We have certain people in Stirling and amongst us who are small minded, bigoted people and as far as I’m concerned that’s one of the reasons I withdrew this application.”
At the start of a full council meeting last Thursday, however, Douglas Dodds said: “I would like to apologise for the words I used at civic panel last week.
“They were misplaced and misjudged and therefore I apologise.”
Pressed by independent councillor Alasdair MacPherson to clarify what the words were, the provost replied: “I’m not prepared to use those words again. I have apologised. You know what they were.”
Later in the meeting, councillors debated a motion put forward by SNP councillors seeking to ban foreign trips by the provost or any other councillor while the council and communities were facing a cost of living crisis.
SNP councillor Gerry McLaughlin said: “It’s not the right time. It sends out all the wrong signals”.
He said he wanted to “make it clear I am not attacking the provost”, but added there should still be mechanisms in place whereby the council could keep up with its international contacts without politics being brought into the decisions.
Council leader, Labour’s Chris Kane, said he had spoken to former Stirling provost Colin O’Brien for background on the Dunedin trips and had gleaned that “whenever this comes up, whoever is in opposition objects to this and it’s a political thing that has been going on for 60 years”.
“I acknowledge that my party has been in the position of doing that too,” he added, suggesting the SNP’s motion, but not Councillor McLaughlin himself, was “ungracious”.
“We will always politicise this because it’s something we have done for 60 years so in order take the politics out of it we have given this matter to the civic panel.”
Tory councillor Bryan Flannagan said he believed the process had worked on this occasion, but the only thing that hadn’t worked was the “media circus” some critics had created around it.
The SNP’s motion was voted down, with a Tory amendment leaving decisions on international travel to the civic panel to consider on a “case by case” basis approved by a majority.
Stirling’s link with the city of Dunedin, Florida, was established in 1964 by the then Stirling District Council. Although not twinned, Stirling is linked as a ‘sister city’ with Dunedin, through the Sister Cities International charitable organisation, whose mission is ‘to promote peace through mutual respect, understanding and cooperation - one individual, one community at a time’.
A number of visits have taken place over the years, both to Florida and by return to the UK. Historically almost every provost has made one visit during their term of office, and acted as chieftain of the Dunedin Highland Games.
