'A Waste of Space' Nominations!

Team Work and Team Spirit? 

We elect Parish Councillors to individually represent the views of all residents within the parish without party political interests unless they declared they were standing for election as a political party candidate.  As the first tier of local government, they have responsibility for some local services such as allotments (!) and village halls (!!), deciding by how much to alter the local tax, commenting on parish planning applications, influencing and shaping the development of the parish(!!!), and identifying issues which are important to the lives of the residents they represent.

Plainly, the Parish Councils should not comprise voting blocs; however Hemingbrough Parish Council includes the remnants of the group known locally as the ‘Labour Group’.  Until the May 2011 council elections, that majority voting bloc did much to bring the Parish Council into disrepute. 

Since those elections, when the then Chairman’s wife and the recent past Chairman’s son failed to be re-elected, that group has contributed little to the new Parish Council, has tried to frustrate and spoil the efforts of the other six Councillors to the extent that the whole Council has produced little of value according to the Chairman who valiantly struggles to make progress. 

Members of the public watch with disgust as the remnants of that voting bloc raise points of order, abuse the Chairman, even accuse her of lying while in office, and unnecessarily extend the time of meetings with the consequence that meetings that should last for no more than two hours can last for three and a half hours, and generally impede progress.  

Their antics go far beyond “robust debate”.  Even the Parish Clerk is alleged to have been making it known in the village how disgusted she was at the antics of Councillor Strelczenie at the December meeting - and she has the power to do something about it!

From notes taken at seven normal parish council meetings, an extraordinary meeting called to agree the council’s accounts because councillors argued for so long that they ran out of time at a normal meeting, and an Annual General Meeting, I can identify those Councillors whom I consider to be ‘A Waste of Space’. 

The Parish Council Chairman puts it much more eloquently in the Council minutes and Parish Newsletter when explaining that the Council has initiated and produced virtually nothing in the past seven months.

My first nomination for ‘A Waste of Space’ is Councillor Eddie Kinsella.  I struggle to find his name in my copious notes and the Council’s minutes apart from noting that he was absent through illness when the Parish Council had the sensitive task of considering a charity donation request from fellow members of his voting bloc that was turned down by the majority of the Council because the Charity did not conform to its lawful purpose. 

He is frequently mute and raises his hand mostly when he sees which way his fellow clique members have voted.  He is not listed on the Council’s website as contributing to any Council committee or group.  He may still attend the Steering Committee of the local Community Engagement Forum (CEF), a position to which he was appointed by the old council controlled by his political mates, however he is often out of step with the majority of the Council now, he hasn’t been seen at the general meetings of the CEF in recent times and one wonders what views he puts forward if he still has that role.

He is remembered for standing up at a Parish Council Meeting, in his role as Vice-chairman, and swearing “on the Bible” to the general public and Councillors that Councillors had not seen any plans of the proposed Yorkshire Water Hemingbrough Sewerage Works at a particular meeting, after which he was contradicted by a number of Councillors who say they did in fact see plans at the meeting they were discussing, and Yorkshire Water themselves who said in writing that plans were shown to Councillors at that meeting.

I am surprised this nomination for ‘A  Waste of Space’ takes so many words to describe.  Does the electorate have to suffer another three years of Wasted Space?