I made a fortunate mistake!

I want to apologise to the Shirebrook community for misrepresenting the facts that transpired at the STC precept meeting and publishing a Facebook post about tax increases a few days ago. The fact is- a tax decision has yet to be made. At the last “Precept meeting”, only options for tax rises were discussed, including the option to “balance the budget”, which requires a tax increase of 25.71%.


Again, I apologise for misleading you- I am the councillor with the least experience in STC- sooner or later, something like this was bound to happen to me. I’m only a human- I will make mistakes. I’m also a man of honour- when I make a mistake: I admit it, apologise and move on. I have removed the post talking about the increase from my fan page. I have no influence on posts made outside my blog’s fan page.

BUT, AND THIS IS 70,000 POUNDS “BUT”
My mistake is a fortunate one– now Labour has a choice: make a fool out of me and don’t raise taxes by 24.71%, plunging the town into a massive deficit, or accept massive raise of the taxes and prove that I was right all along. (comment added to the article at 05.04.2023- I think I forced hand and Labour-led STC decided to increase taxes by just 15%. Maybe Im fool, but I saved residents 70,000 pounds).

BACK TO BUSINESS!
January is a special month in the calendar of local authorities because “precept” meetings are held in this month. A “precept meeting” is a meeting at which the current financial situation of authority should be discussed: income, expenditure, final balance, investments, debts, and plans for the coming year. The nail on the Precept meeting agenda is the vote on the local tax change.

The Town Clerk of STC proposed seven tax options. Options 1-6 means that STC will run a budget deficit (between 198,000 to 73,760). Option 7 means that the budget will be balanced.
Option one: keeping precepts at last year’s level, which would mean a tax cut of 2.88% and a deficit of 198,000
Option two: keeping the tax rate at last year’s level
Option three: tax increase of 4.31%
Option four: tax increase of 7.91%
Option five: tax increase of 11.5%
Option six: tax increase of 15.1%
Option seven: tax increase of 25.71%

LAST YEAR vs THIS YEAR
Last year all was decided at the Precept meeting. It was my first precept meeting, so I only understood a little, but it was way clearer than this year’s precept meeting. In the recording below, you will clearly hear that Town Clerk saying that we (councillors) will choose an option. We didn’t. I apologise for the low quality of recordings- Labour Party councillors block seats close to Chair and Town Clerk, so again- I had to sit far away from “action”.

STC Chair: Pauline?
Cllr Pauline Chapman: Basically, I would (unclear) because I’m not a mathematician, what it would be a price increase for the people of Shirebrook. This is the basically I would like to know. What its gonna cost extra per month?
Town Clerk: So there are figures (unclear) so then on which six precept option you choose, or seven if you wanted to include the option at the bottom of that is balanced; it ranges from the minus 52 (pence)(unclear) that is all band A; to going to the maximum of balancing the budget will be 4.66 per month.
Cllr Sylwester Zwierzynski: And that is 25% increase.

Below is a screenshot of the recommendation for the meeting. As you can see: point seven is to set the precept.


We voted on point one and point two. Then Chair of STC tried to bundle up the votes in one block.

Chair of STC: We moving on now then to 3,4,5,6,7. We can do them in block if you want, if you want to set precept.

From this point on, I was sure we were voting on setting the precept, but… we didn’t. We voted separately on point 3. We voted separately on point 4. We didn’t vote on point 5 at all. We didn’t vote on point 6 either. We didn’t vote on point 7. So what was Chair talking about earlier about voting on points 4,5,6,7? Looks like even him don’t know how it works! The recording below starts at a vote on point 4.

Chair of STC: Leisure Centre staffing recommendations. Moved by Cllr Frithcley, seconded by Clllr Chapman.
Cllr Steve Fritchley: (unclear) five is (unclear). That is probably includes (unclear) (no vote!)
Chair of STC: So number six then (unclear).
Cllr Steve Fritchley: Given what we agreed in previous one Chair, we leave to Jen (Town Clerk) to work it all, and advice BDC (unclear)
Chair of STC: Number seven!
Cllr Steve Fritchley: That’s it. Its done.
(confused silence- I think at this point more councillors were surprised that we didn’t vote on precept)
Chair of STC: That it now. To agree next meeting..
Cllr Sylwester Zwierzynki: So.. ummm… excuse me, but… when we vote on point six (we didn’t!- I meant earlier points- I was still under impression that votes are bundled together) we also vote on point seven to increase tax by 27% or whatever it is? I don’t understand.
Cllr Steve Fritchley: (uncler) problem. What previous one contributes to end product, kinda enshrine point seven which Jen (Town Clerk) will work out and advice BDC accordingly, because Bolsover is rating authority and we are precepting one. (so why Chair at start told us that we will vote on point 4 to 7? And why Town Clerk advising anything to BDC without vote on Precept?)
At this point you can hear my my long sigh.
Chair of STC: That’s it. We done.

ARE WE?
Are we done? I don’t think so. Sooner or later STC will have to announce tax change or massive planned deficit created by decisions voted on this meeting.

Sylwester Zwierzynski