17 December 2008

Shut up Brian!

Meetings of Somerton's Town Council are rarely uplifting and last evening's meeting ran true to form. As usual, the Council members outnumbered the audience by close to 2:1 and, quite obviously, the Town Council don't get the significance of this high level of disinterest. But as a vote of confidence it certainly isn't resounding.

But dear God, what a dreary meeting. Councillors drone on and on and on about damn all and they pepper their exchanges with snide jibes at Council workers. If you believed this bunch, the only people in South Somerset District who work hard are Somerton's Town Councillors, and mainly because they tell you often and loudly. And if you believed them you'd believe that staffers from South Somerset District Council and Somerset County Council had, as their single highest priority, the objective to obstruct Somerton Town Council in everything they do. I do wonder why these individuals behave this way. Does it make them feel better to slag-off others? Maybe its a defence mechanism to deflect attention from their own shortcomings. I'd guess the latter but, whatever the case, it sets a very low tone and underscores just how unprofessional this group of councillors are.

The meeting itself was more of the usual where most items under discussion had clearly been decided in advance and away from the meeting. Thus the only point of the meeting was to either rubber stamp those earlier decisions or to discuss complete inconsequentialities. As examples, we were entertained to: an extended rant about the value of crockery in the parish rooms; a 10 minute ramble through the matter of public loos, the main point of which seemed to be to give Tony Canvin and Paddy Keenan another chance to slag off the District Council and there was also an extended discussion about the state of the bins in Somerton and this brought with it more bitching about District or County staffers. Utterly hopeless.

But I must admit that Cllr Neale got my attention with his interesting contribution around 07:58pm, under the Finance item, when he saw fit to express his support for the £5,000 ceiling before expenditure required a tender. He made the comment with reference to current expenditure on the Tin Dunny (aka Unit 8 Carey Court) and I did wonder what his point was. I wondered if Cllr Neale was as cavalier with his own money as he seems to be with the public's.

But that wasn't the real star of the meeting. At about 09:02pm, some 92 minutes into the meeting, one of the councillors embarked on an interesting question addressed to the Chair. Referring to the vexed question of what might or might not happen to the Parish Rooms, Brian Raybould started off on a statement which went roughly along the lines of, "Chair, if you divide 99 into ..............." and before he could go any further Paddy Keenan leapt in and muzzled Brian with a warning look and an admonishment, "Don't go into that.....".

Now, what was Brian going to get into that stirred Paddy into such a burst of dynamic action? Well, Brian was about to say something along the lines of, "If you divide 99 into the amount of money we are being offered by the Church for a 99 year lease on the Parish rooms, you'll see that we will be getting £XXXX per year." So why did Paddy not want Brian to talk about that? The answer is simple. The Precept isn't Somerton Town Council's only source of funding. Renting out the Parish Rooms will become another revenue stream that the Town Council can spend without reference to the ratepayers and taxpayers of Somerton. As long as no-one knows about it. Hence Brian being muzzled. Well done Paddy, you almost got away with it.

This made me consider what other revenue streams Somerton Town Council has access to and what Somerton Town Council's real budget is. I doubt that the Town Council will tell me but someone must know.............oh yes, and as an after-thought, who owns the land that the Town Council is buying for use as allotments? The usual fiver is available for accurate information.

And as a counter to the rather tawdry events of last evening the image below was made on the edge of the Parret towards Muchelney Pumping Station, earlier this evening.

Goodnight and may your God go with you.

Niall

Stop press ............. breaking news

The Chair of Somerton's Town Council announced this evening that Somerton Town Council, in their infinite wisdom, and after months of exceptionally hard work, have decided to leave the level of Precept unchanged for Fiscal 2008/09. Wooh-Hooh! Hallelujah! Its a miracle! Fireworks exploded over the Parish Rooms. There was dancing in the street. Sworn enemies became friends. It was truly a night to remember.

But wait a minute, isn't Somerton's Precept already 4 times higher than the average of that charged by South Somerset District's 121 Town Councils? So in these times of recession, shouldn't Somerton be working to bring their budget more into line with those of other South Somerset District Councils. How about a cut of 75%? Now that would get my attention.

But to end on a more lyrical note, here is a view out across the Levels near Muchelney made late on Monday.

Goodnight and may your god go with you.

Till next time.

Niall

16 December 2008

What the hell is a PRECEPT?

Having got over the joy of finding out that Somerton Town Council charges the highest level of 'Precept' in the South Somerset District I thought that it might be useful to consider what exactly is a 'Precept'.

A 'Precept' is a local tax levied by a Parish or Town Council and which is collected on their behalf by the Rating Authority. Somerton Town Council cannot levy this charge directly upon the ratepayer so Somerton Town Council works out how much it wants to spend in the coming year and applies to South Somerset District Council for that amount of money. South Somerset District Council collects a much larger sum through Council Tax and passes a smaller part of this revenue to 'local councils' such as that in Somerton. Those funds are the Precept.

The idea behind the precept is that the funds will be applied locally and will more accurately reflect local needs and desires. However, make no mistake about it, such funds are not 'owned' by Somerton Town Council. These funds are generated by the taxpayer and, in an ideal world, the taxpayer should have some say in how they are spent. And that is where Somerton Town Council deviates from the norms that might be expected in a democracy.

When Somerton Town Council makes an application to South Somerset District Council for Precept funding normally there would be some sort of accurate forward forecast of likely expenditure. For such forecasting to reflect local desires one would expect that Somerton Town Council and/or Somerton's Councillors would take soundings within the community to find out what activities or assets the community wanted to invest in. This is usually called 'local consultation' and seems to be a tradition that Somerton Town Council has abandoned. As usual, it is fair to ask why that might be and the answer lies in the bureaucratic mindset.

Bureaucrats, like Cllr Tony Canvin, like public funds because spending those funds confers power. And everyone knows that bureaucrats don't like to give up their budgets which is why Somerton Town Council's Precept always rises. Everyone knows that whilst some parts of expenditure remain generally constant and predictable (insurance, heating, lighting etc), some items of expenditure are one-offs, like a skate park. However, once a bid is made for a certain level of funding and the funding is obtained, bureaucrats hang onto the funds in next years budget. A bureaucrat never reduces their budget so, in the year after extraordinary expenditure, the good bureaucrat will invent new projects to spend public money on.

And so it is with the bureaucrats within Somerton's Town Council. The leader of Somerton's 'Nanny State Faction', Cllr Tony Canvin, likes to spend public money but doesn't like to spend it as the public might want. Cllr Canvin doesn't believe in 'consultation' because Somerton's community might want something of which Cllr Canvin doesn't approve. So, in recent years, Somerton Town Council has done away with asking how the community want their funds spent in favour of the 'Canvin strategy'. This means that Somerton only finds out what their money is being spent on when the Town Council, aka Tony Canvin, decides that they should know and you only have to look at Tammany Hall to see how the process works.

In early 2006, Somerton Town Council invited various stakeholder groups to undertake a study of what the community would like in a 'community hall'. This group, the Feasibility Study Group, did a lot of research and produced an extensive report which was published in July of 2006. That study should have focussed on the site at Etsome Terrace, purchased in 2002 as the site for a community hall. However, in 2005 Somerton Town Council decided, unilaterally, that the site should be used for "other purposes" and, in so doing, completely undermined the work of the Feasibility Study Group. Thus the Feasibility Study Group produced an extensive report which was rendered irrelevant by Somerton Town Council's decision to sell off the site that the community hall should have occupied.

The group that produced the report was subsequently dissolved leaving Somerton Town Council, under the expert guidance of Cllrs Keenan and Canvin and their chums, to cook up some sort of alternative approach. The results of their labours was revealed in all its glory to be Unit 8 Cary Court, an industrial shed at the furthest edge of the Bancombe Industrial Estate (Proprietor - Anthony Henry Canvin). So maybe the real reason for the purchase was so that District Councillor Canvin can lobby for the adoption of the estate roads because those roads now serve a community hall.

Next time I hope to have some more concrete (excuse the pun) information about Somerton Town Council's budgeting. I hope that it will be as informative as the budget that Chard Town Council make public on their website - but I doubt it. Afterall, that would be called 'transparency' and any good bureaucrat knows to avoid transparency at all costs.

Till next time.

Niall

PS The cartoon below dates from 1928 but the headline is more contemporary.

4 December 2008

Somerton is #1 - its official

Given the prevailing economic climate with its attendant doom-sayers, its great to be able to celebrate something. Doubly so when its your own town that has proved itself better than all the rest. And so it is if you look at the Precept that is charged by South Somerset's 121 Town Councils in Fiscal 2008/9.

Now in total amounts, Somerton (£220,000) doesn't charge as much a some (although the Town Council are clearly trying very hard) and it is only in 4th place behind Yeovil (£783,925), Chard (£529,505) and Crewkerne (£229,200) in terms of total Precept charged. But, when you start to look at the amount of the Precept and divide that across the total properties in the Town, that's when Somerton really powers into the lead. Based upon the Precept for 2008/9, Somerton is the only SSDC Council to impose a level of Precept in triple figures at £100.69p per residence. In comparison, Yeovil lags far, far behind in 6th place with a charge per residence of only £58.84p

Somerton's dominance in the Precept League is again underscored when you consider the average Precept charged by the 121 Town Councils in South Somerset. The average Precept charged per property across those Councils is a paltry £24.85p and Somerton exceeds that by close to 400%. Somerton again charges more than 8 times (8.21 times to be precise) the average total Precept across those same 121 Councils at £220,000 compared to an average of £26,773.43p

So, its official. Somerton has the greediest, most money grabbing Town Council in South Somerset, bar none. Doesn't that make you feel good about yourself?

Next time I'll start to look at what Somerton's Town Council spends our hard earned rates on.

Till next time.

Niall

PS In case you think that I'm making this up (and I wouldn't be surprised if you did) then the figures are in the public domain here www.southsomerset.gov.uk/media/pdf/a/a/PARISH_TAXING_TIMES_08-09.pdf with additional population figures here www.somerset.gov.uk/somerset/statistics/contents/population/estimates/2002mye/