Next Tuesday sees yet another ‘extraordinary’ full meeting of Boston Borough Council – the third this year.

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We think it fair to say that in recent months Worst Street has redefined the word – making such meetings commonplace rather than exceptional … bearing in mind that the dictionary describes extraordinary as something “very unusual, special, unexpected, or strange”.

Well, perhaps “strange” isn’t too far adrift.

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Along the way Worst Street has also redefined the words democratic, open, accountable, informative, transparent and honest – but not in a good way.

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Worse still, the council seems to be letting go its long-overdue but feeble grip on openness and transparency, making the voters work harder to find out what the council is up to – or as in the case of next week’s meeting, preparing to deny them access altogether.

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The rot began setting in last night, when there was a meeting of the environment and performance scrutiny committee. 

According to the agenda it was being held in the municipal buildings – but as you might expect, that was not the case.

It was again being held virtually – but there appeared to be no mention of a Webinar for the taxpayers to participate in.

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In fact, there was ... but you needed to be skilled in the art of negotiating WorstWeb – the borough’s website – to find it.

The rocky route to democracy was as follows …

You start at My Boston UK then travel via →Your council → Committee meeting information → Overview & Scrutiny - Environment & Performance Committee → 14^th July meeting agenda →Agenda front sheet ... and then the Webinar link appears near the foot of the page.

Simples! Just six easy steps.

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As for next week’s meeting, the obstacle course runs into a brick wall before the business really starts …

 

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As far as the voters are concerned, no sooner does the meeting begin than we will be chucked out – courtesy of section 100A(iv) of the Local Government Act 1972 which allows the public and press to be excluded.

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In a nutshell, the rule says the public can be thrown out – or in the case of a webinar, have their plug pulled – if an item of business would give them confidential information in breach of the obligation of confidence.

In this case, the confidential information is how much of our money – possibly hundreds of thousands of pounds – is being spent as part of the alliance with East Lindsey District Council.

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The item in question is the “severance arrangements” for the borough’s former chief executive, who left the stage when the “alliance” with East Lindsey District Council was reluctantly agreed by Worst Street with just one vote.

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At the time, there were complaints that the deal was “eyewatering” – which is what you might expect when you part company early with a £100,000 a year officer who has worked for you for more than 35 years.

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Certainly, the reason the settlement is under discussion is because of the size …

But we suspect that £100,000 would be the tip of the iceberg – and that the total is considerably more.

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Quite a few councillors made their feelings felt about this settlement, and we wonder whether enough of them feel so strongly that they are prepared not to allow it to be discussed in secret – after all, they are only being asked to “consider” discussing it in private, and can refuse if they consider it to be in the public interest.

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And what is there to discuss?

Presumably whatever deal has been done is now part of the borough’s history and not subject to change.

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This meeting is yet another example of how not to do things properly.

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The alliance with Manby was a fait accompli as far as most opposition councillors were concerned – and whilst they breathed a lot of hot air at the time it was discussed, that merely served to dry the ink on the deal more effectively.

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The best that they could achieve was a condition that allowed Boston to back out after nine months by giving three months’ notice – ending the deal a year after it began.

But too much would be at stake for this be become a serious likelihood.

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East Lindsey is shouldering two-thirds of the costs of the alliance, and we are sure that its leaders wouldn’t be too keen after having paid a fortune for non-staff redundancies to see those posts being re-created in a year’s time if Boston went native again.

So that alone is likely to see any withdrawal by Worst Street hitting the buffers.

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Meanwhile, we note that Boston is already moving down the pecking order within days of the alliance becoming reality.

When the merger was just a glint in the glass eye of our leaders, top level talks appeared to have taken place.

But now things look a little different …

Now, the leader seems satisfied with a “positive catch up” to discuss opportunities “linked” to the alliance.

It doesn’t exactly sound trailblazing, does it?

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And speaking of the alliance, whatever became of an opposition threat to demand a judicial review that we were told could “derail” the deal.

Your guess is as good as ours.

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