By Carole Dennett
The Isle of Wight Council recently unveiled their shiny new ‘Committee System’ rules, and much like a group of kids with new toys, they promptly broke them.
The ‘Standing Orders’ sound important, but they should be renamed ‘Sitting Suggestions’, given how easily they’re ignored.
Their first meeting, the AGM circus, was limited to three hours by the new rules. That was no match for our council’s love of pointless arguments. Just before the timer ran out, Cllr Geoff Brodie (Ind Lab) suggested they “suspend standing orders,” essentially ignoring their freshly-written rules. Perhaps next time they can save time, effort and paper and skip writing rules entirely.
The time-limit disaster was largely due to a drawn-out game of musical chairs over leadership roles. Cllr Phil Jordan (Alliance) was re-elected leader after Cllr Karl Love (Ind) was told the chairman of the meeting couldn’t vote for himself.
However, the highlight of the meeting was undoubtedly Cllr Vanessa Churchman (Con) gazing adoringly at Empowering Islanders (EI) leader, Cllr Chris Jarman, as she said: “I’m sitting in front of a brain surgeon; his capacity on physical matters and anything and everything is absolutely phenomenal. You ask a question and he will nearly always have the answer.”
Perhaps Cllr Churchman ought to go on a course (council-funded naturally) to find out the difference between ‘THE answer’ and ‘an answer’ – or has Cllr Jarman been performing lobotomies on the sly?
Adding to the absurdity, Cllr Clare Mosdell (Con) threw her decision-making prowess into the mix. She said that honesty between the parties in advance (some hope) might have swayed her towards voting for Cllr Andrew Garratt (LibDem) as deputy leader, but instead she was backing Cllr Jarman, because she “can’t wait to watch him work with Cllr Jordan.” This raised chuckles across the chamber as it’s said the two loathe each other.
It’s reassuring that those making decisions about our money find all this bickering so entertaining, isn’t it?
The truth was the Tories had done yet another deal with the ‘non-political’ EI group to grab power – and for the third time failed. It doesn’t seem to matter who runs the council – they’re all as bad as each other. However, based on these showings, the Tories seem particularly poor at strategic planning – and sums.
After three and a half hours of squabbling, the council achieved little beyond showcasing their inefficiency. So they postponed some decisions until the next meeting.
That meeting, on Wednesday evening, was no better. They were there to discuss housing numbers in the new Island Plan, but most of the first hour was taken up with arguing about what happened the previous week.
When they finally got around to talking about housing the bickering continued.
Back in October, after spending eight years and £850,000, the council finally sent their Island Plan to the government to see what they thought of it. The answer was “not much.” The Conservative government told them they had to build 1,045 homes a year, Labour says it should be 1,104. The final plan the council submitted suggested 453.
In April the answer arrived. To paraphrase it said: “You can either increase it to 703 – or start again using 1,104. Let us know by June 9.”
Officers recommended they go for 703. On the day of the meeting the Conservatives and EI came up with a third option: “Tell them we’re not going to do it – we’ll see them in court.”
This started arguments about democracy – seemingly they forget the government is elected too. They also overlooked another inconvenient fact – that our council is not very good at winning court cases!
Various councillors thundered that it was not what Islanders want – undeniably true, but we don’t like paying council tax either – and they haven’t discussed abolishing that.
In the end even most of the Conservatives agreed their suggestion was a busted flush – and the option recommended by officers was passed by 21 votes, with six votes against and four abstentions.
They then passed an hour or so deliberating over decisions postponed from last week – like who was going to sit on an almshouse charity, but not being sure whether it still exists. They could have just Googled – it does.
Having agreed 48 appointments at great length, they closed the meeting – having forgotten to vote on them.
More than six hours of debate – and our council has decided who gets which job and that they will do what the government says over housing figures!
Our councillors are (almost) all pleasant and well-meaning, but they ought to be forced to stand on one leg every time they repeat a point already made – we’d quickly have a roomful of flamingos.
Let’s hope new council chairman, Cllr Ian Dore (Ind), who has a military background, will get a grip of this Charlie Foxtrot – when he gets back from his holiday.