Ain't they got no homes to go too?

Something that rather concerns me is the amount of time our Town Councillors take to make a decision. In did a bit of research to back up my feelings on this matter. This is what I found:

P and R 18/11/09 -19.15 - 22.46 - 3.5 hours. Only item discussed is the budget. All other items were discussed on P and R 25/11/09 - 19.15 - 21.30 - 2.25 hours.
So to discuss the agenda of 18/11/09 it took 2 meetings and a total of 5.75 hours.
Town Council 02/12/09 19.15 - 21.58 - 2.75 hours
Town Council 15/12/09 19.15 - 20.05 - 50 minutes, but deferred the budget and the Car park for the Church decision.
P and R 16/12/09 19.15 - 21.15 No decisions taken. 2 hours

This is just one night for the Acting Town Clerk.  Planning on 18/11/09 started at 18.15 and finished at 19.00. P and R started at 19.15 and went on for a further 3.5 hours. So the ATC has spent at least 4.5 hours at unimportant meetings. No wonder Helen is getting a bit stressed.

Simple discipline of the majority group and the Chairman would get business done quicker and decisively. Instead of endlessly debating the budget, get on with it. It is the Liberal Democrat budget. The Liberal Democrats should have debated this in their own time. At Council, this should be a set piece where the Liberal Democrats saying what a wonderful budget and the Conservatives saying it is rubbish.

Others meetings:

TCM 04/11/09 19.15 - 22.30 - 3.25 hours
TCM 07/10/09 19.15 - 21.30 - 3.25 hours
TCM 09/09/09 19.15 - 22.45 - 3.5 hours

Town Councillors are volunteers. A properly delegated committee system would negate all these long meetings. No wonder people are put off becoming Town Councillors when these Town Council/Committee Mettings are run (Councillors are to blame for this) so badly.