Council Leader Gets a Good Kicking
On the letters page this week on the DT website, three seperate residents have a go at Graham Baxter, Leader of the NE Derbyshire Council, for his comments on criticism that he was wasting council tax payer’s money.
The whole fiasco blew up in Baxter’s face when it was announced that employees of the council were to be given an extra weeks holiday and a party to celebrate the fact that they had done their jobs OK. Most critics arguing that that was what they paid for anyway…
His rather lame statement in last weeks news was that the council was rewarding people for “the commitment, passion and sheer hard work of our staff over the past four years” - something that most people expect from well-paid, well-trained staff as a matter of course.
The first reader criticised Baxter for “rubbing our noses in it” by “rewarding people for simply doing their jobs”.
The second of Baxter’s critics, Trevor Sandell, takes him to task for saying “that the decision to give all staff an extra week’s leave per year will be at no extra cost and will have no detrimental effect on service levels or service quality.” Mr Sandell points out that “it follows that the council was using significantly more staff resources than it needed to get the job done in the first place.”
The third letter from Islwyn Pryce, Lib-Dem district, county and town councillor, accuses Baxter of expecting the taxpayers to “suspend belief in normal logic and mathematics.”
As the economy goes down the pan and the threat of price rises/redundancy etc is currenty worrying many, many, people and small businesses, Councillor Baxter has managed to do the wrong thing at the wrong time for the wrong reasons - quite a hat-trick of insensitive, smug, bad judgement that seems to be endemic in local government.
I wonder why no one has rushed to his defence…
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