Smalltown and Dullbridge (SaD) Town Council Finance and Misappropriation Committee will tonight consider grant funding requests totalling £22,456.
The money will be coming from the current Grant Budget of £32,300, leaving one third of the full amount unspent – which makes a change from last year when Councillors overspent because they didn’t actually know how much was in the pot before allocating it.
Amongst the applications for consideration is one from The Smalltown Pantomime Group, which includes Squire Teflon amongst its members. The Panto group regularly put on the Smalltown Panto in January at the White Elephant Enclosure and are requesting £2500 to cover the anticipated £3194 bill from Omega Events – the WEE’s in house lighting and sound technicians.
Omega Events services must be employed by anyone wishing to hire the WEE, even if the requirement is only for a single microphone.
Meanwhile the Smalltown Entertainment Team (SET) are requesting a grant of £1000 to go towards the cost of hiring the WEE for rehearsals.
In their applications both groups make mention of the spiralling costs now associated with using the WEE. Costs which are expected to increase again once the WEE Mismanagement Committee implement the recommendations suggested by the Top Secret Consultants in the Top Secret Report commissioned to look at ways to user numbers. The number one suggestion is to increase hire charges to local community users, which could lead to even more grant applications for funding to use the WEE in future.
SaD Town Council has previously handed out grants to subsidise groups wishing to use the money to spend on WEE costs ever since Squire Teflon famously saved it for the Nation by spending £1 of his own money to buy it, since then it has cost Smalltown and Dullbridge residents almost £1 million in subsidies.
In fact, under Squire Teflon’s reign any group requesting a grant merely had to submit an application reading ‘We will give this money to the WEE‘ to get the funding.
With both grants expected to be approved this puts an additional £1000 into the WEE’s accounts for 2023/24 and a further £2500 of Council Tax Payer money into the pockets of the company retained by the Town Council to provide technical services.