Sally Allen: We’ve all had enough of cloak and dagger style council politics

I seriously wish I could write about something positive and joyful but my email inbox is constantly full of people with serious concerns about the way our council is run.

There have been too many mistakes, misjudgments and broken promises for the public to continue to forgive, and they certainly won’t forget come election time.

The unrest and unhappiness is also ramped up by the fact that there is zero transparency in the decision making or even a basic knowledge of what exactly is going on. Sadly, this appears to even extend to a number of the Tory party’s own councillors, who also say they are kept in the dark.

The ‘Cabinet’ is where it all starts and finishes, with no open debate, either with their colleagues and fellow councillors and definitely not with the public.

This is all compounded into a perfect storm of stalemate due to the Tories having 18 seats and the Independents and Lib Dems having 18 seats. The casting vote on all decisions, major or small, therefore lies with the puppet Tory mayor, who was parachuted into this precarious position when the Tories realised that they could be out-voted if they kept to their promise (agreed by the whole council) to appoint the long-serving and highly experienced Swithin Long, the leader of the Lib Dems.
Instead with an immediate change of face, Cllr David Thomas appointed the inexperienced, but Tory, Hannah Stevens to the role of civic mayor.

This is no way to run a democratic council and to look after the best interests of Torbay and its residents. Clearly everyone who writes to me, either directly or via Facebook, has had enough of the broken promises and the cloak and dagger style of administration.

In a normal business with a stalemate situation this would be swiftly dealt with, otherwise share prices would fall and confidence in the company would be on the floor. The council should be no different.

Once promises have been broken, not once but numerous times (too many to count), there can be no confidence in the council members responsible.

All the promises have been meaningless and without foundation. The obvious glaring example of this is our beloved Pavilion. At the 11th hour (actually later than that!) the council announced that there is now a, previously unknown, third party involved and that is the reason for the delay in the MDL handover.

Well, who? Why? What difference does it make and why?

I am sorry to have to say this but the councillors who are doing these negotiations are clearly not up to speed or don’t have the ability to deal with MDL.

If this was a late curved ball from MDL, it shows chronic naivety on the part of the negotiators, and if the third party was known before, it shows unforgivable negligence.

Either way, the councillors responsible should be made to fall on their swords if they continue to brazen this out as just another day in Toy Town.

It is probably too much to expect for them to do the honourable thing and resign.