Dorothy Thornhill

I have been a blog free zone for some time and am trying to get back into the swing of things. This week has been eventful. It has contained three major briefings to residents, (I would hesitate to call it “The Sate of Watford” address but it’s my humble version), our Budget Council and a visit to the Palace to get my MBE, plus lunch with our MP today! So tonight is shamelessly sofa night attacking the bottle of bubbly I had for last night, post Palace, but was too zonked out to drink. The joy of the Vbox catch up facility!!

Budget Council well what’s to be said . There is a copy of my speech on the Council’s website plus the slides I have been using for my residents briefing if you want a bit more detail. Budget wise it is not easy to continue to shave money off the budget year after year after year. Standing still costs money (a fact it took me a couple of years to really grasp!). Whilst the staff salaries are frozen many still get increments so that is increasing. Our income from our commercial properties, including the market, is dropping, our interest from savings – dropping, our grant from Government dropping … you get the picture.

Yet my ambitions for the town are undiminished. On the night the main row was about my salary (set before I became Mayor by an independent panel and reviewed every year since) and believe me its nights like this that I wish I’d stayed in my old job (Assistant Head at Queens School). I would be better off in salary terms, pension wise and it was certainly less hassle! But would I swap back? No not really. The independent panel recommended a freeze this year which is exactly what I expected and feel is right. They also recommended a freeze for Councillors. Again we agreed with that.

From this you can be reassured that despite posturing to the contrary on budget night, there is a broad cross party consensus about the budget. It goes before a Budget Panel for several months before we debate it in Council. The papers are all in the public domain. It is chaired by the opposition and they make recommendations to cabinet which I always try to accept and have done so again this year.

This year Labour were a bit at sea making contradictory proposals. The Conservatives broadly in agreement with some specifics which they highlighted. Green Party on message for growth and jobs. I got the impression that the Labour Leader’s speech had been written by someone else (a former Labour Leader?) as it had some of his pet whinges in it which can be seen regularly on the WOBS website; unfortunately this made the current Leader look as if he didn’t know what he was proposing! Some people just can’t let go of the strings… I neglected to say it’s a council tax freeze again this year.