Oakham Town Council 2021 council tax.
I posted a question and comment on Oakham Town Councils Facebook page about this matter and another and they deleted those comments, they were not offensive. I understand the comments may have been Cllr Adam Lowe, who admins the page and for some reason has never been able to accept comments or questions from those who he claims to represent, on both the Town and County Council.
It is a fact Oakham Town Council that does almost nothing for our community stashes away more reserves than it can legally hold. A former Mayor Michael Haley often disputed this fact and the Clerk used to attempt to justify it by saying its a bit like what you might do at home, you put some away for when its needed, the problem is parish council are not permitted to save money. The issue of the unlawful reserve levels have been raised by the internal auditor and that is why the current Mayor Dave Romney often refers to spending the reserves it, they are mentioned in the recent press release.
For almost a year the town council has done a thing for our town and not spent a lot of our money, but they have set the budget at the same level as previous years.
In their press release they try to justify the precept level, by sharing a very few things they do for the town.
The interesting thing here is if you add up the cost of those things listed, it does not even total up to half the precept demand, it might just reach that point if you add the fulltime wage of the dishonest clerk (dishonest because she lied to the police) and the much needed assistant clerk.
If the council was being honest with residents it would have cut the precept and used reserves.
The council has £80,000 stuck in the Cambridgeshire Building Society. The money was from Larkfleet/Hawksmead 106 contribution, it was meant to be spent on attracting residents from the new Oakham North Development into town, so Cllr Adam Lowe decided and persuaded the members that tendering law did not apply to Oakham Town Council and the money was spent on resurfacing one of the paths in Cutts Close. Because they could not access this money other reserves were used.
There is no reason for the council to be seeking £275,595 from the tax payers, the only reason they do is because if they did not ask for the same money people might start asking why? the answer is they have illegally built up reserves since a former Mayor Jayne Woodcock with another Alf Dewis pulling her strings and whispering in her ear, thought it might be nice just to build a reserve. Cllr Alf Dewis was the Mayor who resigned after a audit. Although he had done wrong his actions were publicly supported by another former Mayor Adam Lowe. Adam Lowe is one of the long term problems at the Town Council a problem that stops it improving.
Perhaps the council that agreed to spend £5500 on a new chain for the Mayor will spend more of our money this year on a new chain for the Deputy Mayor, they could fulfill ex Mayor Dewis original request to also buy one their partners.
