What disarray

Tonight was the Annual Town Meeting this the meeting where the chairman of the Council reports to the community of the successes of the previous year.

What a wonderful start, we were locked out of the meeting for half an hour, what anecdote of the previous year. 

The meeting started with a report of the new Neighbourhood plan, this one of the positives of the Town council years, this opportunity to explain the plan was delivered in a rather defensive mode, with rather unpleasant discussions and when I tried to raise a point about the prioritisation from the public consultation and the community buy in from the consultation, the Chairman did not want to let me speak, in fact I was made to feel my presence was not required.

These discussions should not distract from the importance of the Neighbourhood plan and the councillors have distributed leaflets to townspeople to get involved.

Then we came to adopting the minutes of the previous meeting last year, members of the public did not have copies of the minutes, one member of the public told the annual meeting this was against standing orders, one councillor then tried to make the point about the previous clerk and the way he left the Council and then total pandemonium took place, the councillor jumped up and walked to the front of the meeting to make his speech, Conservative members walked out, the spouse of the clerk called the police, she then rejoined the meeting.

This led another member of the public to make a speech about the utter shambles the meeting had turned into, it was agreed that the clerk should read the minutes.

The meeting at that point regained a little dignity, with the Chairman leading thanks to those councillors who had worked for the Council, with my efforts on the Collett park contract was thanked, which I appreciated.

Then we moved to public forum, where further discussion of the ending of the previous clerk employment, the chairman made a long speech outlining how we had arrived at the current state of affairs, closure of the date for applications for the clerk and admin assistant close on Wednesday.

There was discussions about the hospital and I asked about the new NHS leader who said hospitals should shrink or close with community care in the community the best way forward and I asked if this was discussed in the working group, I'm not sure councillor Champion understood the point I was making, but he say the hospital was important to our Town, with hearty hear hear from the public.

Some discussion about a councillor who wrote a letter to the press about pot holes and grass cutting, the councillor did not respond.

As we were leaving on the pavement in Commercial road a policeman came towards us, I advised him that the meeting was over and the best thing he could do was have a cup of tea as the event was over, at this the Chairman and his wife stopped the policeman to tell of the councillors behaviour, a conversation between the Chairman and Policeman ensued with the councillor offered the chairman's job next year by another councillor at this the Chairman and the councillor was advised to go home by the policeman, I walked away feeling we had hit a new low, what disarray!