23 February (Part 2) - Council tax up
This evening’s cabinet meeting which approved the budget to be put forward to
the full council on the 4th March was a well run and unusually civilised affair. The formal
business may be summed up as, council tax up 1·9%, £2·9 million taken from reserves and
fees and charges up 3% on average. The published price increases make the
3%
claim difficult to accept, but that is what they keep saying and as earlier
dictatorships have discovered, if you say something often enough it will most
likely be believed.
Some details will be filled in tomorrow but meanwhile I would like to
congratulate whoever it was who laid out the room for the four members of the
public who bothered to show up. Mr. Kevin Fox was the Committee Officer.
Before the meeting started I picked up comments about my ‘back of the heads’
photos but it would have been difficult to repeat those tonight. I had to draw my desk
and chair backwards so that I couldn’t be mistaken for a councillor, the desk
was placed forward of some!
The view could not have been better and when one unfortunate individual was
not using his microphone properly, council leader Teresa O’Neill asked him to
mend his ways. So no problem hearing either.
Now that Bexley has shown that it can be done I expect those who have been
complaining about the poor sight lines and acoustics will be complaining even
more when arrangements are not good enough.