The Council Meeting is there to debate decisions but has specific rules of debate. The real problem behind the Council Meetings has to come back to the set up of the Town Council. Instead of having a proper system of delegated committees, this Town Council runs a bad system of Committee recommending to Town Council. So something debated in Committee IS debated again at Town Council. This is what paralyses the Town Council and makes decision making very slow.
As for the meeting itself. The first decision I witnessed was over the Eaton Socon Village Green. The Town Council approved the option on returning the land to Village Green with access.for the Church. More on a later post.
The next decision wasn't. The Forward Plan failed to go forward. I do agree with Cllr Ursell that the Forward Plan and the budget should be integrated. More on that in a later post.
The last decision was over precept. There was a long debate (50 minutes) which was mainly Cllr Chapman asking questions of clarification. The other part was the problem over the Personnel Review. The Conservatives were talking not having a budget until the Review had been completed. Err... It is legal requirement that SNTC passes a budget. There was also a debate on the amount of reserves. More on that in a later post.
The budget passed was Option 2. This was a precept of £858,727. With a Council tax base of 10195, this equates to a band D charge of £84.23. More on that in a later post.
This was passed on a recorded vote with the only 2 Conservatives left voting against. Cllrs Ursell and Harty having left before this vote. One of the Conservatives reasons was there was "no contingency" in the budget. I don't understand that reason. More on the Conservatives in a later post.
I realise I could write for hours on this one meeting. I will be doing so in little bits over the coming days.
1 comment:
Yes please. Interesting stuff, keep it coming.
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