Smalltown and Dullbridge (SaD) Town Council’s White Elephant Panel (WEEP) met last night to discuss the revised budget for 2023/24.
Presenting the *New* *Improved* Figures the Smalltown Culture and Arts Manager (SCAM), Debby Karmary said “I know councillors and members of the public were shocked to see the real figures for the White Elephant Enclosure which detailed an income of only £50,450 with expenditure of £245,443 which had led to a request for council funding to cover the shortfall of £194,983.
As you are aware, the SaDTC Finance and Misappropriation Committee asked us to look at the figures again and present a revised budget based on my having to do some real work in terms of increasing usage.
With that in mind I have used an online random number generator to make the figures look better.
By carefully adding random amounts to every estimate for income streams during 2023/24 I have managed to add an extra £8,000 of income.
For example, during the 21/22 financial year box office sales generated £5,729. In the six months between April-October 2022 box office sales generated £1752. It’s realistic to expect that to double over the course of 12 months, so the full income would be in the region of £2504.
However, the previous estimate for box office sales during the current financial period was £5,000, obviously we’ve only achieved around half of that, but I have entered a figure of £7,500 for the next financial year. It is doubtful that we will achieve this, but it looks good on paper.
Similarly, Art Sales have regularly generated around £100 per year, but I’ve increased the estimate for 2023/24 to £400, based on absolutely nothing.
I was also asked to look at ways to reduce expenditure. This isn’t quite so easy and I’ve only managed to save around £6000 by randomly knocking a few pounds off here and there. I’ve also employed a new way to add up by not including all the numbers.
The biggest expense for the WEE is salaries, which this year have risen by £30,000 thanks to SaDTC approving my idea to employ someone to market the WEE and seek new acts and shows. This was something which was part of my own job description and is a very important part of running a WEE, but I had found myself busy doing… errrrm… ummm… errrrm… no, I’ve got no idea what I actually do, apart from invent fictitious figures for budgets and visitor numbers.
The *New* *Improved* Revised Budget will now be put before the White Elephant Enclosure Mismanagement Committee during an extraordinary meeting on 14th December.
Any members of the public with access to a calculator or who have experience of running a business are asked not to attend, as the completely inexperienced councillors, who haven’t the faintest idea about running a WEE, yet who make up the committee, would rather not be shown up as the ignorant and incompetent fools that they undoubtedly are.