A Folkestone Christmas Carol

Written by Tim Prater on Thu 7th Dec 2006

A Dickens of a story: Folkestone's own Christmas Carol...

It's always fun to find yourself in the Martello column in the Folkestone Herald. A piece this week reads:

"One upon a time, there was a town council with £20,000 in reserves. Along came Tiny Tim Prater who suggested the Folkestone group should spend the cash on street cleaning.

"But along came the Tory and Go Folkestone councillors, who said the money should stay in the bank and the cash raised through good old-fashioned taxation. Expect plenty of fireworks at the showdown at the town council budget meeting next week."

Like most pantomime scripts, it's a good story, but made up. The real story is still worth telling however, and the Lib Dems are still working on producing the happy ending.

A proposal put by myself and the Lib Dem group to Folkestone Town Council backed spending on new measures to make Folkestone streets cleaner, and also called for a zero percent tax rise from Folkestone Town Council next year.

The proposal would be paid for by adding £20,000 less to reserves next year, NOT cutting existing reserves. Folkestone Town Council reserves are currently around £150,000. The draft budget would have seen this rise to over £200,000 by April 2008.

Although this proposal would have led to balanced budgets, no increase in council tax from Folkestone Town Council and cleaner streets, only the Liberal Democrats backed it.

Councillors from Go Folkestone, the Conservatives and "People First" voted against. Some wanted to see council tax rise to ensure higher bank reserves, and some wanted to see the extra spending on cleaner streets (in addition to that spent by Shepway Council) axed for next year.

So I suppose if I'm Tiny Tim, that would make Go Folkestone, Conservatives and People First Scrooge himself. Rest assured, we'll keep trying to get a fairer deal and convince Scrooge to change his ways, back our proposal, and let all Folkestone residents have a Merry Christmas and live Happily Ever After.