Preamble to Town Hall meeting

As mentioned earlier, there's a public Town Council meeting in Glastonbury Town Hall about the future of the Morlands site. It was called (by the mayor of Glastonbury) at very short notice, which some suspect was a tactic to wrong-foot the protest group and the people of the town. Only written questions from the public would be allowed. The deadline for questions was very short (5 days). This left the protest group, with whom I have close contacts, very little time to agitate and concoct a strategy, which I'm not alone in suspecting was the general idea.

I was active in formulating and distributing a neutrally-worded leaflet which explained the situation and allowed people to write a question on the reverse.

Anyway, the deadline passed yesterday at noon. That leaves just over 48 hours for the town clerk to look through the submitted questions, chuck out the anonymous/illegible ones, de-duplicate and collate the similar ones (I bet there are quite a few "where's the money gone?" submissions), and then forward them to the relevant parties. It's only right that SWRDA get to see them beforehand and get some time to prepare: there would be little point in letting SWRDA get off the hook by saying "we need time to answer this, we'll get back to you" and all that...

I suspected from the start that the choice of the earliest possible time for a public meeting (council meetings are required by law to be announced publicly a week before they take place) was a risky tactic that could turn round and bite SWRDA on the......rear end: they only have a couple of days at the very most to get their answers sorted out. Lots of questions could be a bit of a problem as mistakes occur when you're in a hurry.

So I bet you're wondering: how many questions are there?

Lots, apparently: I've seen ten separate and detailed questions from one local sustainable development organisation alone. I've heard on the grapevine that there are more than 20 different questions, which is an awful lot for a meeting that begins at 7pm. Somehow I don't think there will be time for questions from the floor.

I love this town. I'll admit that it looks a bit 'different' to the casual observer, but scratch the surface and you'll find lots of really good people and a strong, renascent community. Well done, the people of Glastonbury. We might just wag the dog...