The below email is in response to me asking questions in relation to why our public streams have been made private the below is from the chairman of the town council (who i believe not to be standing again).
So can a commitee with delgated powers over turn a descion approved by full council by delegation of everything to do with communications to the clerk.
the email i sent
Dear Cllr , you may wish to recheck your facts.
The council made a recommendation and subsequent approved all full council meetings and committee meetings were to be live stream and stored on the official youtube channel for open and transparency to the public.
This was decided by full council and change of this E.g changing from public to private would need the ratification of full council as it would be a change of an approved agenda item.
For information i checked before commenting. The clerk nor any other councillor has the authority to remove or change an agreed and approved recommendation of the council, without the item being discussed and approved by the full council.
As the streaming and storage of all public meetings was lawfully agreed by council then my requests for a response as to on what authorisation and by whose authority has the chanel been made private been made.
It brings to question the openess and transparency of the council.
Reponse from Chairmen
Dear Gary
I had hoped that you might be able to make it through to the elections without further embarrassing yourself, however if past experience is anything to go by, I should have known better. As usual you've done half a job and completely missed the point.
Since the resolution you quote, the decision was taken by the staffing committee to give the clerk responsibility for all external communications of the council, it is in her job description. This is legal as the Staffing Committee have delegated authority from the council for all matters concerning staffing. It was further reinforced by the resolution of full council some months later to disband the Communications Working Group, which also stated that communications were the responsibility of the clerk.
Moving on, you refer to your "commitment to the community", I have to says that in five and a half years of having to work with you on this council, I haven't seen any commitment by you to anything other than furthering the interests and public profile of Gary Blundell.
You have also publicly accused myself and our Clerk of bullying you. In what might be regarded as a significant understatement, I'd say that was a bit rich, given your behaviour both in and out of meetings. You routinely fail to treat officers and councillors with appropriate levels of respect. In meetings you routinely attempt to catch officers and councillors out with questions (occasionally actually relevant to the subject being discussed), when you could have had them addressed in advance of the meeting. You make regular appeals to some sort of higher authority, insinuating that officers or myself don't actually know what we're doing. It is notable that on not one occasion when you claim to have reported any matter to said higher authority (whether the District Council monitoring officer or anyone else) have I ever received any contact from them to discuss the matter. I would suggest that is either because no report actually took place, or that they took the view that we weren't actually doing anything wrong.
Your conduct in council meetings is so bad that it has been cited by potential applicants for jobs at this council, and by people who have been asked to consider standing as councillors, as a reason (indeed the only reason) why they do not wish to work for or be a member of this council. As you will no doubt have seen when you watch the streams of meetings that you do not attend, they generally get a lot more done, a lot more quickly, and the atmosphere is far more what would be expected from a healthy and functioning Town Council. Debate at these meetings is generally polite, reasoned, and relevant to the issues being discussed. The presence or absence of any other member of this council from a meeting does not have this effect, and therefore I believe it is reasonable to infer that in this case the correlation does in fact indicate causation.
Your behaviour to councillors outside of meetings, haranguing them on the telephone for hours, and/or berating them on social media or in the local press, would meeting the definition of bullying and harassment in our Code of Conduct.
It has been brought to my attention that you believe that you will be elected chairman of this council in May. Having spoken to a number of members of that new council, I am confident that a majority of them share my opinion that you are completely unsuitable for the role, as evidenced by the frankly terrible job you did when you were vice chairman. I am equally confident that any of the fifteen other councillors eligible to stand for chairman would do a far better job than you could. Other councillors have expressed the view to me that you might be able to count on the support of other members of the Liberal Democrats in order to become chairman. Having spoken to some of those members, they have similar views to my own, which is that I'm ashamed to have to admit that we are both members of the same political party. Given that you have shown no loyalty to that party over a considerable number of years, it should perhaps be no surprise if other Liberal Democrat members are not willing to show any loyalty to you.
I think I've said all that I want to at the moment on this subject.
