The Smalltown and Dullbridge Town Council Town Unimprovements (TUMPS) Committee held an Now-Ordinary- Extra-Ordinary Committee meeting last week to try again to agree the TUMPS portion of the budget for 2024/2025 after it was agreed to defer the decision in order to talk and think about it some more.
During 2022/23 the TUMPS portion of the precept £68, 594 and, during the Ordinary TUMPS Committee meeting in early December, Councillors had been aaked to consider increasing the share to £97,494, which included a sum of £24,094 to provide further mosaics on Smalltown Sea Front.
Squire Teflon had proposed agreeing the budget in full, however, Fun Police Officer Patsy Knickers urged caution, saying “It’s bad enough to see frivolous spending on Christmas and the Festival of Bangs and Flashes, without adding in the cost of art work at a time when people are struggling to feed themselves.”
Chair of TUMPS, Cllr Jim Rabbithole proposed that the final decision be deferred until the Head of Mathematics, Cllr Banish Barracuda, could get his calculator out.
The rescheduled meeting, held a week later, saw Squire Teflon again try to push for approval for the full budget, saying “We really do need to include the extra funding for the Sea Wall Mosaics in Smalltown.
If there’s one thing that will draw visitors to Smalltown Sea Front it’s more mosaics and definitely not Intergalactic Food, Drink and Craft Fairs.”
Councillor Banish Barracuda disagreed saying “We errrrm need to make errm savings – especially errrrm as we don’t errrrm yet know which extra errrm services devolved from errrm the errrm All-New-Yet-Unimproved errrm Scrooge Cuonty Council errrm we will need to errrm pay for.”
With three BeFuddled and three Illiberal Councillors in attendance, Cllr Rabbithole was again able to use his casting vote to obtain approval for a budget which no longer contained funding for the art work and a New Unimproved TUMPS budget of £68,694 was agreed. Much to the chagrin of Squire Teflon who was later heard drowning his sorrows in Albanian Whiskey and muttering loudly about “getting revenge on those BeFuddleds by pushing for an increase in the White Elephant Enclosure budget.”