{"id":5771,"date":"2011-02-05T23:43:22","date_gmt":"2011-02-05T23:43:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.onlinefocus.org\/?p=5771"},"modified":"2011-02-05T23:43:22","modified_gmt":"2011-02-05T23:43:22","slug":"the-absent-councillors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onlinefocus.org\/the-absent-councillors\/","title":{"rendered":"The Absent Councillors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Green Party Councillor Michael Hoy makes an interesting point <a href=\"http:\/\/mikehullbridge.wordpress.com\/2011\/01\/28\/a-council-meeting-with-a-lack-of-councillors\/\">on his blog here<\/a> about the District Council&#8217;s budget meeting:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;.. This process culminated in Tuesday nights meeting where we were to vote to accept or not this budget.  To me this must be one of the most important meetings of the year, as Councillors we are deciding how much money is to be spent and on what.  Cuts were being made and decisions included reducing grants to charities by 40%, introducing parking charges for staff to raise ?30,000, the closure of Great Wakering Sports Centre and increases to parking income of ?100,000 amongst others.<\/p>\n<p>Out of 32 Tory Councillors I counted 17 who turned up meaning 15 were absent.  Nearly half of the Tory Group did not attend the most important council meeting of the year, a meeting which will affect all residents of the District as well as the staff.  I am sure one or two may have been ill (I know of one who was) but 15?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>For the Lib Dems,  4 out of 5 of us were present (one absent though illness).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Green Party Councillor Michael Hoy makes an interesting point on his blog here about the District Council&#8217;s budget meeting: &#8230;.. This process culminated in Tuesday nights meeting where we were to vote to accept or not this budget. To me this must be one of the most important meetings of the year, as Councillors we [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[17,19],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Absent Councillors - onlineFOCUS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.onlinefocus.org\/the-absent-councillors\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Absent Councillors - onlineFOCUS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Green Party Councillor Michael Hoy makes an interesting point on his blog here about the District Council&#8217;s budget meeting: &#8230;.. 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