Smalltown and Dullbridge Town Council has confirmed that it will be spending £63,000 on Christmas Lights over the next three years.
The contract for the lights was put out to tender earlier this year and three companies responded supplying proposals. A panel consisting of Squire Teflon, Professional Councillor and Fridgpond resident, Mark Facelift, Fun Police Officer Councillor Patsy Knickers, and former Pontlins Green Coat Councillor Jim Rabbithole, conducted interviews with the respective companies before scoring them on a points system and then passing their recommendations on to the Full Town Council.
Company A scored the lowest points and offered a cost per year of £20,294k. The company had included plans to make a ‘feature of prominent buildings’ such as Dullbridge Community Hall. However, the company lost points for planning to make a feature of buildings such as Dullbridge Community Hall.
Company B scored equally with Company C, with the latter’s costings, the lowest of the quotes at £16,694.94, including a sum to install new brackets and also included larger lights on the lampposts. Company B planned to utilise the existing brackets (assuming they confirm to current Health and Safety Standards), but with a few additional lights in Dullbridge and George Street in Smalltown, both areas which have drawn criticism in recent years for looking distinctly unfestive.
The panel of four Councillors opted to recommend that Company B be awarded the contract, as they were the only company that offered the option of the lights being controlled remotely, meaning that at the Switch On event Dictator Dullard will only have to press one button to operate all the lights at once, rather than relying on volunteers to coordinate switching on the lights all at the same time
Squire Teflon insisted that this was very important, because many people still laugh at the video (available on UToob) of the unfortunate incident in Fridgpond, when the lights were switched on before the Squire had pressed the button, leaving him (not for the first or last time) as the laughing stock of Somerset.
The cost of the lights proposed by Company B will be £21,000k per year, meaning a total cost of £63,000 over the three years.
Unfortunately SaD Town Council had cut the amount available for Christmas Lights, by £5000 allocating only £20,000 to the budget for this financial year, which means further money will have to be seconded from either the reserves or a different budget.
During the tender process none of the companies made any mention as to how environmentally friendly their lights were and, of course, SaD Town Councillors recently agreed to eschew choosing the green tariff for energy in favour of the cheapest, thus meaning that the power for the lights won’t be in line with SaDTC’s Climate Rescue Action Plan (CRAP).
At the SaDTC Extraordinary Full Council meeting on Monday the Councillors present voted for the proposal to use Company B.
Squire Teflon was later seen smirking and telling anyone who would listen “I tricked those idiot BeFuddleds good and proper! They’ve only gone and awarded the contract to the most expensive company. AND overspent the budget. There’s only one kind of ‘green’ that applies to them. And it’s nothing to do with their CRAP.”.