Town Council - No change on accounting method.

Last year during the budget planning, the Town Council initially announced a zero percent increase in the precept, but later increased this to 1.8% on discovering calculation errors.

After the announcement the Mayor promised:

A rigerous examination of all the budgets will be carried out during 2009, with discussions to find the balance of "Service to the Town" with "Individual Costs"

The discussions will include deciding which if any of the services provided, especially if used by only a small minority should be run on a more commercial basis.

So far, this review has not started, and the Council have decided not to change the way they record and publish their accounts. The lack of accounting data will make the review very difficult to achieve.

At a recent finance meeting the Town Clerk told the Cllrs that the "object of the annual budget is to match income to expenditure, it (the Town Council) is not a business"

Micawber's Principle, may be based upon his observation:

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

but surely a Town Council should have a higher objective than "happiness & misery"

Tenbury Town Council do provide a number of worthwhile facilities for the people of Tenbury, but now that the they are rapidly reaching the same cost as the District Council, all expenditure and income strands need to be closely examined.

The Town Council is not a business, but they really should know what they are subsidising and by how much. Calls upon their limited resources will continue to increase at a time when many of their funders, local Council Tax payers, find their income static or reduced.