Letter: Council Motion Was Not Last Minute

Published on: 13 Oct, 2018
Updated on: 13 Oct, 2018

Cllrs Tony Rooth and Paul Spooner

From Tony Rooth

Cllr. Spooner said my motion was made “at the last minute”. But Valerie Thompson, who commented on the story, Bad Tempered Debate on Transparency Gives Clear View of Bad Blood, is right; the motion was sent to all councillors on 1st October, so they had eight days in which to agree the obvious – that the council fully supports democracy, transparency and accountability.

Cllr Gunning, during the debate, was right too – the debate on my motion was delayed because councillors, including Independents, Cllr Bob McShee and myself, did ask questions about and debated:

– the Local Plan and new reduced housing need figures

– the final cost of The Village failure project £1,120,000 and the council’s failure to explore other uses for this wasteland

– the cost already spent on Walnut Bridge – £1,024,787 in total, £641,808 of which was for consultants, proof that the costs are too high and it is a project representing ambition over reality

– what is going on in our partnership with Dongying, a Chinese city famous for being the world’s largest manufacturer of rubber tyres?

– the need for more democracy and transparency to residents than only one question per meeting and three minutes to speak – councillors don’t have a monopoly of good ideas

Residents do ask and deserve to know “What’s going on?” and it is surely not “sanctimonious tosh”, as Cllr Billington put it, to ask for the council to tell them more and let them participate properly at an earlier stage? Otherwise, more large sums of taxpayers money can be wasted on fancy schemes.

Tuesday’s council meeting was the most unpleasant and bad-tempered in my 15 years as a councillor with unwarranted personal attacks on Cllr Parker and myself.

Dragon readers can view here the council meeting horror drama.