STC expenditure in 21/22 and tax year 2022/2023 forecast
It seems to me that thanks to this article, the residents of our town, for the first time in history, will have the opportunity to see with their own eyes the detailed breakdown of the town’s expenses. Reading the facts below is not encouraging (they show a picture of the administration with wages and costs blown to the limit, no vision for the future and unpaid debt with evergrowing interest). Still, since I promised that I would write about everything important, the following tables and analyses are one of the most important articles that can be written.
This was my first Precept meeting, so I didn’t exactly know what to expect. When I was walked into Town Hall to attend the STC Finance and Growth Committee meeting on 12th January 2022, I thought members of this committee would finally talk about the crippling debt of the town, dwindling town cash reserves and plans to turn things around. But, unfortunately, nothing of the above happened. Basically, this meeting was just to review current tax year spending and compare it to the forecasts.
Most of the predictions were accurate or close to it. Those predictions which were not correct- usually fell victim to our favourite disease: China Flu. Covid absolutely destroyed most of the projected revenue of income from events, Leisure Centre and rent of market stalls. Essentially all forecasts linked to any human activity, even despite planning for lower footfall, have deviated from reality.
Since all crucial issues are contained in item number five of the below agenda, I will focus on that in my analysis. One issue worth mentioning before is the fact that due to the growing population of our town, the council does not need to raise taxes to receive more in tax income compared to the previous tax year. The pure growth of households paying taxes will grant a healthy rise in collected tax. Keeping the same precept would mean that tax should be lowered. Good news? We’ll see…
F/22/001 TO RECEIVE APOLOGIES AND REASONS FOR ABSENCE.
All members of the committee present.
F/22/002 TO RECEIVE DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST.
None were declared.
F/22/003 TO APPROVE THE MINUTES OF THE FINANCE & GROWTH COMMITTEE OF THE TOWN COUNCIL HAVING BEEN HELD 15TH JANUARY 2020.
Approved.
F/22/004 TO REVIEW AND AUTHORISE BANK RECONCILIATION TO 31ST DECEMBER 2021.
Reviewed and authorised.
F/22/005 TO REVIEW BUDGET DOCUMENTATION AND CONSIDER OPTIONS FOR INCLUSION IN PRECEPT INCLUDING ANY COMMITTEE REQUESTS OR REFERRALS.
Let me start from the end: the only committee request was to increase the reserve cash needed to finish the CCTV project. No money for Youth activities or additional ideas were set aside. Literally- there wasn’t a single idea of spending money to make the town safer (expanding CCTV to cover the whole town today doesn’t seem to be a bad idea), cleaner and more modern. There weren’t also a single idea or proposal on cutting expenses and saving money.
As I am not a member of this committee and can only listen to its activities, I had planned to present my proposals at the Town Council meeting on 26th January. Then I saw the financial forecast for 2023. Any additional plans can be put between fairy tales for one simple reason – there is no money for anything. 2008 is coming back like a nightmare… literally- council employee cost will eat us alive.
The projected employee cost for this year is £504,000. It will be significantly higher than last year and higher than last year’s forecast. Yes- you read it right. Almost ALL (5/6) money from your tax goes straight into the pockets of STC employees. Half a million for wages in tiny Shirebrook. The meanwhile biggest town is District spends… £230,000 for the exact same thing. There is no excuse, no explanation for that. STC staff costs must go down if Labour thinks about growth, not just keeping things as they are now and were in the past.
The single biggest spender of your money is Leisure Centre. £184,000 just for wages. After that is “recreation, cemetery and allotments” employee cost- £125,000. Administration wages stand at £110,000. Market £69,000 and finally Village Hall £16,000. On top of that, you need to add all additional costs. So let’s look them through…
GENERAL ADMINISTRATION (Town Hall)
The only underestimated cost was building repairs and maintenance. Most of that sum was spent to fix broken lift and install AC. At this point, I must mention a severe error that I have noticed in most of the forecasts made by the town bureaucrats. I am talking about forecasting identical expenditure on utilities in 2023. There is probably not a single person at the moment who is not aware that gas and electricity bills in the second quarter of 2023 will be significantly higher than this year. Planning for the same expenditure for this as in 2022 is planning for failure.
Vladimir Putin and the “green” agenda will take care of that…
RECREATION, CEMETERY AND ALLOTMENTS
Other than high staff cost- no issues. Most of the spending is close to predicted levels.
VILLAGE HALL
Once again we clearly see the impact of Covid. 4,000 underspending in bar/catering, less in utilities, refuse is clear evidence that people are still not keen to mingle.
LEISURE CENTRE
17 people on payroll and POOF… almost 1/3 of tax income is GONE! About utility spending: to be fair, I need to note that overspending is misleading: I wrote about it some time ago. Due to a mess in a company that provided solar panels to LC, they didn’t bill STC for years. Now they did- so we had to pay all bills in one go. I’m wondering about very high IT/administrative costs, which also went way above predictions.
Another note: the central government announced that Leisure businesses can apply for a 50% discount in NNDR in tax year 22/23. If our LC would obtain that discount we could save around 17,000. I asked about it at the meeting but at the moment of the meeting, the STC was not aware of this opportunity. I found some confirmation of this information online after the meeting so I will send it to the enquiries desk at STC. No harm to try, right?
MARKET
A further 32,000 saved in staff costs due to far fewer trading days at the Market. Fun fact- town noted a 20k loss in income on stall rent. Is it me or something that doesn’t add up here? What are these figures telling us?
PUBLIC CONVENIENCES
The name of this item in the documents is misleading. Why has the STC moved away from the term used in earlier records? Perhaps because they know that the name: ‘GOLD SERVICE’ would enrage taxpayers? Cool 18k goes into private company pocket every year for Market Square toilets, and Labour did nothing about it for years. Every year cost for God knows how long more… (until next local elections?).
OTHER
WHAT IS MISSING?
Single repayment for Town Hall loan. In other words: we will add another cool couple K to the debt. I know, and if you have read this article https://shirebrook247.com/why-are-they-not-afraid/ you should have an outline of the Labour Party’s plan for what will happen before the next election.
FORECAST
I won’t go into the report’s details because I feel like I wrote about it several times. What’s the point? To sum it up I will say that: the estimated balance of the STC bank account on 31st March 2022 is 378k. “Our leaders” estimate that year later bank account balance will stand at 220k. Hundred fifty thousand will disappear from cash reserves, and we didn’t even pay ONE SINGLE instalment of “Town Hall mortgage”.
At this point, I think the Labour Party is planning to lose a local election in 2023 and leave this mess for someone else to fix. The only other way is to face the problems: but we all know that Labour instead sends the country for illegal war than that, so…
F/22/006 TO APPROVE DATE OF NEXT MEETING.
I don’t remember what date was set, and I forgot to turn on the recording, so… I don’t know. The date will be set probably at the next AGM.
END
In next week article, I will have to do something I didn’t do on pages of S247 ever- I will have to apologise. Hold on to your hats!
Sylwester Zwierzynski
