To Mayor or Not to Mayor? That is the election!

Apparently, Huntingdonshire District Council messed up the on whether we wanted an elected Mayor or not by holding the consultation early and not wide enough. Yes, the Huntingdonshire DC missed out on involving THE PUBLIC. Now we have a second chance to decide on whether we want to have an elected Mayor.

So would an elected Mayor be better for Huntingdonshire? My answer is it could be. Instead of having a party person in charge we could have an Independent or a person from a minor party elected by Huntingdonshire to run the Council on our behalf.

If things go wrong we would have someone to blame and if things go right then we have someone to praise. This would mean better accountability of the elected Mayor. At least we would be likely to know whom he or she is rather than the faceless party hack we have at the moment. I don't know who the current Leader of the Council is and I do read the local press and District Council propaganda.

What an elected Mayor won't do is make the electorate come out and vote. It hasn't done this elsewhere.

At the moment we have a Council which is being less than honest with residents about how bad the situation is with the budget deficit. We cannot hold these people to account until the elections in May. Even then it will be an election with a third of the seats up for election so it unlikely the Conservatives will lose control. There are 13 Conservative seats up for re-election. With 37 seats out of 52, the Conservatives need to lose 12 seats to lose control. Even if the Liberal Democrats win all the Conservative seats up for grabs they cannot win control of the Council. What we can look forward to is a hung council with no party able to push through the reforms needed. An elected Mayor looks good from this point of view.

In conclusion, I'm in favour of having an elected Mayor for Huntingdonshire (though shouldn't it be an elected Sheriff?) as we need better local Government than we currently have and we need a way of circumventing the current electoral arrangements to try and ensure it is THE PUBLIC has its say.