Town Council Propose Spending A Whopping £9.7k On New Tables For The Council Chamber!!!
31st January 2019 | By Peter Chapman
Burgess Hill Town Council astonishingly discussed spending over £9,700 on ten new tables for the council chambers at the meeting of the full council on Monday evening. The tables are 'showing signs of wear'.
There was disbelief among the public who were seated in the public gallery that the council could be considering spending so much money when we are constantly hearing how the council are seeing their income cut due to reduced funding and a loss of contracts.
The council state that there is no money in the budget for new tables and that extra savings would have to be made elsewhere in the budget along with the hope that public hire of the council chamber helps cover the costs.
Cllr Jacqui Landriani welcomed that the proposed new tables include a 'modesty panel' (which the existing ones also have anyway). She said that the tables at Mid Sussex District Council Council don't have such a feature and has caused some 'interesting situations' - the mind boggles.
Ever the voice of reason, Cllr Andrew Barrett-Miles said that the council should not agree the recommendation and that town clerk Steve Cridland should go away and come back with a more sensible quote as 'to pay £900 per table for one of these is like daylight robbery in my view'.
Steve Cridland - presented the highly inappropriate £9,732,30 quote to the council
A member of the public present at the meeting broke protocol by interrupting the debate to give one of the most common sense views ever aired in the chamber:
The lady said: "Could it not be entertained, the potential possibility, of going up to somewhere like Wilko and buying twenty table mats that are wipable down, you can put them over the tables and cover up all the modesty and potentially save quite a lot of money. I think it's going to disgust quite a lot of people in the public for considering this kind of money for some tables."
Under pressure, the council changed the recommendation from the town clerk and resolved to send him away to come up with a much better figure. Well done the member of the public!
Over on Twitter, BHU's tweet about the issue threw up this very sobering point....
| Spread the word! Should the council really spend £9,700+ on new tables for the council chamber?
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 Got an opinion on this story? Leave a comment below.....
Do you think that £9.7k is a reasonable price to pay for some tables?
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