Around sixty irate islanders turned up on Wednesday for the debate on the controversial proposed council tax rise.
The meeting kicked off with a half an hour presentation explaining the mechanics of council tax, what the Authority receives from central government and how council tax is collected.
St Marys’ Gordon Bilsborough, who last week criticised the rise to Scilly News, suggested an alternative recommendation of 4.9%, using more money from council reserves. While councillors argued that they had tried that for a number of years and the result was a 25% increase.
One member of the public did add that the proposed increase is still more to pay than pension or pay increases will be and with these sort of rises every year people will eventually run out of money.
Other topics that were discussed in the meeting were the fact that the tax is based on band “D” houses whereas most properties on Scilly are in a higher band. This means that council tax on Scilly is unfair. This was brought up with the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office but the Council were told “The formula will not be altered to suit individual councils.”
Cllr Steve Whomersley suggested “All the community need to be having this argument with central government, not arguing amongst ourselves.”
Much of the meeting was dominated with a discussion on the huge drain that the school puts on Scilly’s economy. Election candidate Rick Barrowman demanded that the Authority lacks the breadth of experience to operate as an LEA and should contract the whole education service out to another authority.
“At the last Education Committee meeting, Head teacher John Evans said he would be ?200,000 short of the balanced budget. The school is the biggest drain on this Authority’s money. After the frankly appalling Ofsted report, are other councillors going to embrace a complete contracting out as favoured by the Dfes, as the only way to get needs based funding for the school.”
Head teacher John Evans argued that it was doing a disservice to the young people of this island to say the school was a disaster.
“The Ofsted report did not make easy reading but I have read hundreds and if it were that bad this school would have been taken over by the Government.”
“Funding is a problem but it is not insurmountable and going elsewhere is not the answer.”
He went on to say he did not have as much experience as the Treasurer about Council tax but “I have 26 years experience as a Head teacher and no one can beat me in this room on education funding.”
Councillor Christine Savill added: “The Ofsted report wasn’t comforting to any of us. Improvements have to be made within the LEA. The Chairman, Chief Executive and Treasurer went to London recently and were reassured that the overall running would be retained on Scilly. There is a high probability that we will enter into a contract with an outside authority but Members have not yet made a decision.”
Referring back to the main issue of paying Council Tax she said: “None of us like to pay taxes. The 25% rise last year was very uncomfortable for Members and Officers to decide and we can understand the anger and frustration in the community.” But she asked people to think about whether they want highs and lows more than a steady reliable increase.
The Chairman of the Council, Dudley Mumford, said that all local authorities have been asked by the Government to give their views on an alternative method of local taxation and as part of that process the Council would like Scillonians comments on alternatives.
A leaflet Council Tax- What next for the Isles of Scilly? Was given out at the meeting, which suggests some alternatives.
The final decision will be decided at Full Council on 9th March