At last week’s annual meeting of the Isle of Wight council, the meeting schedule was proposed and voted through.
As we mentioned last week, the time of the budget meeting that takes place was moved from 6pm to a 5pm start, but the frequency of meetings was also discussed.
April meeting should be kept
Cllr Ian Stephens raised concern that the April full council meeting was being removed from the schedule.
With August and December already off the timetable, he told the meeting that councillors had a duty to their constituencies to ensure that open debate took place on a regular basis and suggested that if the April meeting was being removed, then perhaps December should be included.
Conscientiously or otherwise, Chief Executive of the council, Steve Beynon, was pulling some quite unusual faces during Cllr Stephens’ address to members, which I read as him being ‘put out’ by the desire to have ten meetings rather than nine.
Open debate supported by Cllr Richards
Cllr Richards stepped in to support Cllr Stephens’ remarks stating that there were less meetings than 10 years ago, and therefore less opportunity for open debate.
Cllr Pugh argued that the agenda is very light for April and reminded members that if they want more items to be debated in the meetings, they can simply ask for something to be added to the agenda.
Most decisions made by Cabinet
Cllr Lumley expressed concern at the number of decisions being made away from full council, he gave the example of the recent decision made by Cllr Abrahams over the move of the fire control centre to Surrey, adding that he hoped the subject would be re-visted by the council soon
He went on to say that he sometimes looks at the agenda and wonders why the council are meeting, given that the decisions are made by the cabinet.
Cllr Lumley stressed the importance of other members to bring issues to the council meetings which was met with large applause from the public gallery.
Motion defeated
It was proposed that a meeting held on the third Wednesday in April be included in the schedule of meetings.
Cllr Pugh, turned to the left of the chamber saying, “We’re not voting for that.”
The vote was taken, with 21 members voting against the motion to include an April meeting.
Image: Dafne Cholet under CC BY 2.0
