As the question of ‘How do you solve a problem like the WEE’ raises its head once again, theatre and musical impresario Anthony Floyd Blubber puts forward his suggestions for the White Elephant Enclosure.
“With the WEE losing money at an ever increasing rate I believe it would be sensible to look for ideas to stop the rot.
I believe that Smalltown and Dullbridge (SaD) Town Councillors have a number of options available to them.
If they are intent on keeping the property then they need to seriously consider selling Hayloft Road Palace as soon as possible, rather than talking about it for another fifteen years. Move the town council into the WEE, making WEE staff redundant in the process. That would amount to a huge saving.
With the council administration staff in situ there is no reason why the WEE couldn’t continue to offer the space to community groups and clubs on a charged-hire basis.
Selling Hayloft would see an end to the extensive maintenance costs required and would also see a sum of money placed in the accounts, which could be used for sensible projects.
In the meantime, whilst they await some one to come along and take Hayloft a Palace off their hands they should mothball the WEE and agree to not spend a single penny more on it.
Other options available for consideration would include SaDTC cutting their losses and closing the WEE. They could simply wind it up, or even call it a day. Alternatively they could look at shutting it down. Another idea would be to drop the curtain on a permanent basis.
Continuing to throw money at it in the hope that it will make money is just about the worst idea currently on the table, and if the BeFuddled Party, who now make up the majority of Councillors at SaDTC, don’t want to make themselves extremely unpopular with residents by raising council tax, then they would be wise to consider the alternatives sooner rather than later.”