Leader of the Smalltown and Dullbridge (SaD) BeFuddled Party, Councillor Banish Barracuda has responded quietly to claims that the Headmistress and Mayor Cllr Kelsey Dullard, together with her Deputy, Cllr Eugenie Sherry, have acted beyond their omaginery powers.
Cllr Barracuda said “Umm. It was a fairly full council meeting on Monday with a couple of key things we had to discuss. However, err, prior to the meeting, both the Mayor and Deputy Mayor decided umm that we wouldn’t waste time err discussing them and instead told us what they’d already umm decided we are going to do.
Regarding the, umm, tree at the corner of Vicarage Road, the actual decision we had to make was whether to set aside £9,400 of the town’s money to manage and monitor it for a few years rather than err felling it in line with County’s command.
This had become necessary because the umm All-New-Yet-Unimproved Somerset Cuonty Council Branch Manager, Pete Bitterman, was err furious that local Smalltown residents had defied his previous order have it felled and, during a meeting with our Mayor, the leader of the ANYUSCC, Phil Crivens, and a umm friend of the Mayor, it was stressed that the Mayor needed to either control residents or spend umm SaD Town Council money instead, because Somerset certainly weren’t going to.
Cllr Dullard agreed with them that the money would be better spent on keeping the err White Elephant Enclosure open for three weeks and, rather than umm discuss the matter during the meeting, she simply passed on the news that she had agreed that the err tree will be chopped down. At no point did she umm seek the err opinion of local residents.
We also considered the err approach from the owners of the Blitz Cinema to take over the running of the White Elephant Enclosure. That is to say, we umm all read a copy of the letter, but Cllr Eugenie Sherry told us that we weren’t actually going to discuss the contents until she receives the report from the umm consultants that she has retained off her own bat, without receiving prior approval, to tell her what a White Elephant Enclosure actually is.
Brandishing a copy of the Ladybird Book ‘Peter and Sharon visit the Theatre’ she told us that she is also carrying out her own err research.
We are hopeful that by umm June Cllr Sherry will have some sort of idea of what the WEE Mismanagement Committee are supposed to be doing. But don’t hold your breath.
Although one of the err BeFuddled Party’s strengths is talking about things rather than doing things, on both these umm occasions the Mayor and err Deputy Mayor felt that they know best and there’s umm no need to go down some sort of democratic route to enable decisions to be made in the correct manner.
I know that some SaD residents have been shocked and umm appalled that both Cllr Dullard and Cllr Sherry have acted outside of their powers and made decisions without consultation with either the umm Council or residents, but I would like to remind you that SaD Town Council welcomes the err opinions of local people. But only on the unimportant things like our Climate Rescue Action Plan (CRAP), where umm residents are invited to come along and talk with us about things we can’t really do anything about. Citizen action at its best.
Decisions on issues that actually matter to residents are best left to those of us who know what we are doing i.e. the umm Mayor and err Deputy Mayor.”