RESIDENTS in Wellington are being invited to a first-of-its-kind open forum with town councillors on Wednesday (January 31) to discuss how their council tax should be spent.
The hour-long session on Wednesday will immediately precede a special council meeting where councillors have to agree a budget for the 2024-25 financial year.
They will decide on their precept, which is the town authority’s share of council tax bills, and how much it should increase, if at all.
The open forum will be chaired by Wellington Mayor Cllr Marcus Barr and will allow people to give their views on the services which are important to them and to ask questions of councillors.
It will not be restricted to three minutes per person as happens with public participation during a formal council meeting.
The forum will also be given feedback from a public consultation exercise the council is currently running until lunchtime on Wednesday.
Cllr Barr said: “This is something new for us, we have not held a session like this before where people can come along and, within reason, have their say and talk directly to us.
“We all know how difficult things are at the moment with the cost of living crisis which is seeing lots of people struggle to meet their bills.
“Citizens Advice, which the town council is helping to fund, told us only recently that with debt problems suffered by their clients, council tax arrears was by far and away the largest issue for them.
“We really do not want to make council tax bills any bigger than they have to be, but equally we know that there are a lot of services that Somerset Council are about to stop providing because of their financial crisis.
“So, do we pick up the tab for some of these services, which means raising the money to do so through council tax, or do we let them stop?
“That is why it is so important for people to come along and help us make up our minds on the decisions which we will be faced with at our meeting on Wednesday.”
The town council consultation can be found online via its website here, and paper copies are also available in the temporary public library building in North Street and from the council's offices in Fore Street.
Posters with QR codes linking to the survey have also been positioned on several lampposts around the town centre.
Town clerk Dave Farrow said Somerset Council was asking town and parish councils to take over responsibility for managing and funding assets and services which it was not required to do by law.
For the coming year, they included the cost of keeping open public toilets in North Street car park and Wellington Park, planting flower beds in the park and hanging baskets and planters in the town centre, and provision of CCTV.
The unitary authority also wanted to hand over some minor highways works, such as verge maintenance, highways surface water drainage maintenance, sign cleaning, verge cutting, and weed control, plus, maintenance of bus stops and shelters, and the daily locking and unlocking of Wellington Park.
Mr Farrow said he had been told that in another 12 months’ time the town council would also need to take on the management and maintenance of all of Wellington’s green spaces, including the park, playing fields, and recreation ground.
He said: “All of this will have a significant impact on the amount of funding the town council has to raise from the precept.”
The town council meeting will start at 7 pm in the United Reformed Church Hall, in Fore Street, with the public open forum starting at 6 pm.
Mr Farrow said he appreciated it was short notice, but the council’s position had only just started to become clear, because information from Somerset Council on likely costs had been changing on an almost daily basis.