Reflections on the Town Meeting.

The Annual Town Meeting was to total farce. Well beyond time that it was separate from the Annual Council Meeting. I was late and missed the first bit. Then we had a very emotional time of having the Town Mayor drone on about raising £8500 for charity but not being re-elected. His own fault. Yet he took ages. This seemed to be the Gordon Thorpe show rather than an Annual Town Meeting.

We had the Youth Team leader giving a short talk, same as at the Neighbourhood Meeting a few weeks previously. The Huntingdonshire Business Against Crime presentation was a bit of a disaster. For the life of me I couldn't see the point. This seemed to be presentation about retail crime but how many retailers were there in the audience.

Questions were of course cut short. Of the 13 questions I put in beforehand only two were answered. The rest I await from the new Chairman/Town Mayor to answer.

The question over the Town Plan from another member of the audience was totally fluffed by the Town Mayor who seemed to be in a different world to the rest of the audience. yet he had the Town Clerk sitting next to him. Gordon seems to take the role of being spokesman for the Town Council personally when he is only Chairman and should pass questions onto those who know.

What is the point of having an Annual Town Meeting when people are not allowed to ask the questions? Of course the Chairman's decision is final. But it is a waste of time and energy. Gordon Thorpe did a disservice to the Town by not allowing questions. Gordon once said to me that "You are the most hated man in St Neots". Does this colour what I feel. Well no. I revel in this accolade. I'm just having a go at exposing some of what goes on in this town.

I probably get the blame for his downfall. But if Gordon actually went out and properly campaigned he should have done much better. Instead it is easier to blame everyone else rather than for Gordon to look at what he didn't do.

In the end the way the Annual Town Meeting is constituted it is a waste of time for the people who turn up and the people who ask questions. The Annual Town Meeting is for the Town not the local politicians.

And what about the Town Mayor's Charities

Having had a look how the Chairman of HDC costs Council taxpayers to raise money I thought I would take a look at how much The Town Mayor costs the Council Taxpayer to raise money for his charities. I feel raising money for charity is a wonderful process. But should this cost the Council Taxpayer? So I put in a Freedom of Information request. The answer is here.

Unfortunately the Town Council hasn't been forthcoming on the actual costs of raising this money. The Town Mayor has a part-time secretary.

I feel the Town Council should look closer at the cost of raising money for Charity by the Town Mayor. As the Town Council reply puts it "these are part and parcel of the officer's routine tasks, no separate toll is made of these hours." This means the Town Council doesn't know how much it costs the Council Taxpayer to raise money for charity. Although they know it costs. For all the Town Council knows the cost of raising £4800 could cost £10000 to do.

The one part of the reply I don't understand is the following:

The Mayor's entertainment allowance (Yes he has an entertainment allowance and not to be confused with his allowance) is paid for out of Council Tax. Every time the Town Mayor hires Council facilities it is the Council Taxpayer paying for this. Indeed hiring excludes the venue from being hired by an outside person paying real cash.

The Town Mayor gets an allowance of £2830 plus a Hospitality budget of £2200 and Civic Regalia/Functions budget of £1200. Not forgetting the extra money spent from General Reserves on his new outfit.

I do feel the Town Mayor shouldn't do his work for free. But in paying the Town Mayor and other costs I feel the public should be informed of how much this all costs. The attitude seems to be to hide the costs all over the place and then come up with the final figures without the expenses. For instance: "We raised £4800 but we have excluded the £10000 it took to raise this money." This is effectively using Council Taxpayers money to subsidise the raising of money so The Town Mayor and the Town Council looks good.

More on the Annual Town Meeting

I've finally gotten around to reviewing a bit more of the Annual Town Meeting. The Town Mayor gave a report on the Town Council for the previous year. A copy can be found here! So what was missing? In the year of 2 damning audit reports - not one mention. According to the Mayor's Report these damning reports simply didn't happen!

I did ask a couple of questions:

As you can read from the answers the Town Mayor didn't want to talk about the issues raised. Probably thinking about his new ceremonial robes!

Moving on!

The Town Mayor went on about the new Staff Structure. As ever, no diagram or hand out was given. The Town Mayor said:

The review removed to two part-time posts (though full-time according to the last published staff structure).

I just have to wonder what the Town Mayor is taking us for. The removal of the Finance Assistant post and the Town Centre Manager posts whilst welcome only takes a small step. As for the creation of the Deputy Town Clerk - it wasn't as there is no where that it was actually deleted! Thinking about this, I don't really understand what the Town Mayor was on about. Especially as I found this minute:

Having got rid of the Finance Assistant, the Town Council is going to employ an accountant. The Town Mayor didn't mention this!
To resolve this question I thought I would look up the current Forward Plan. There isn't one currently published. I looked back and found this:

Since this minute from a meeting of 16th December 2009, there hasn't been a whiff of a Forward Plan being agreed or even published! All this wrong and the Town Mayor get new robes. Then I wonder why the Town Council is in a constant mess.

The Mayors new robes

This has got a few people fired up. The anti-establishment Liberal Democrats have gone down the road of being part of the establishment by endorsing the tradition of the Town Mayor having mayoral robes and a hat. There is some law behind this. The Town Council was a Parish Council to start with. The law allowed the Parish Council to use the term Town Council as an alternative. With the change of name came one extra provision and that is a Town Council can decide to have a Mayor. There are a few Town Councils that don't have Mayors and are quite happy with a Chairman.

So the Town Council doesn't have to be called a Town Council. The Town Council doesn't have to have a Town Mayor and a Town Mayor doesn't need to have robes! So the question is why?

Town Mayors and other civics dignatories tend to meet at civic occasions. The other Town Mayors turn up in their finery and the one from St Neots turns up in his best suit. As a member of a crowd of Town Mayors our Mayor looks decidedly plain. Having these mayoral robes is part of keeping up with the other Town Councils and is the politics of envy. What St Neots Town Council should be doing is looking at the what St Neots needs and not keeping up other Town Councils.

If SNTC wants to promote civic pride why not start with regaining Quality Town status which the Town Council lost. If that is too hard why not just get the website up to date. Far easier to spend a bit of money on a bit of finery than do something to fix what is wrong with the Town Council.