These day's it's rare that Boston Borough Council Leader Richard Austin shares his thoughts with we mere mortals. In fact those who crave his pearls of wisdom have had to make do with his New Year's message on the borough website for almost six months now.
But like Deep Thought - the computer which took seven and a half million years of serious cogitation to come up with the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, the Beloved Leader has stirred in his slumbers to speak to us once more.
In a letter to the Boston Target headed "We're prepared for a difficult future," he writes: "The public sector as a whole will find the next few years extremely challenging but here at Boston Borough Council we are doing everything we can to be well prepared," he tells us.
After the usual blame game of condemning the previous administration for all the ills the borough faces, he goes on to outline how the Boston Bypass Independents plan to confront the challenging times ahead for local authorities.
He tells us that there will be "a major review of everything we do and how we do it. Each service is being further examined to see if there is any duplication of work or
whether all we currently do is necessary."
Later, his letter says: "We will be looking at purchasing and procurement, better IT support and at staffing costs throughout the organisation. The whole purpose of this
is to maintain and improve the service we offer our residents and customers whilst being as efficient as possible.
"This programme is currently in its early stages. Ideas and views of staff and members are being sought on areas for particular review. These items will go to Cabinet for discussion in July and we will then prioritise and our work programme to ensure we can balance our 2012 budget and beyond. "
These are fine and inspiring words, but as we read the letter in the Target of 2nd June, we had one of those eerie feelings of deja vu.
Was it possible that we had heard them somewhere before?
It was indeed.
In the delayed second issue of the borough's electronic bulletin delivered to subscribers on 24th May, headed "Planning for the council's future," Interim Chief Executive Richard Harbord set out in some detail the problems facing Boston Borough Council, and the solutions it was considering.
The piece included the news: "We have therefore set in train a major review of everything we do and how we do it. Each service will be examined to see if there is any duplication of work or whether all we currently do is necessary, we have already carried out a review of the top management structure of the Authority which now just has a Chief Executive and two Directors. We will be looking at purchasing and procurement, better IT support and at staffing costs throughout the organisation. The whole purpose of this is to maintain and improve the service we offer our residents and customers whilst being as efficient as we possibly can.
This programme is currently in it’s early stages. Ideas and views of staff and members are being sought on areas for particular review. These items will go to Cabinet in July for discussion and we will then prioritise and programme our work to ensure we can balance our 2012-13 budget and beyond."
Mr Harbord's article ends as Councillor Austin's began: "The public sector as a whole will find the next few years extremely challenging but here at Boston we are doing everything we can to be well prepared."
It strikes us as sad that after almost six months without addressing his adoring public, Councilor Austin should blatantly hijack Mr Harbord's article for a good half of his "letter" to the editor.
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but we would have hoped that the leader could have come up with some thoughts of his own on such an important issue.
He also has the cheek to add: "Borough residents will be pleased to note that the BBI will continue its policy of not increasing the borough council tax, and I am pleased to see that this is now the coalition government's plan."
Call us naive, but we had the feeling that decisions about council tax were generally taken in a more democratic manner, rather than being arbitrarily announced by the leader ten months before the tax is next due to be set.
The fact is that the BBI made a catastrophic miscalculation by not imposing a small increase over the past two years which would have generated a reasonable income at little cost to taxpayers.
Because other authorities have imposed increases in excess of inflation the government is now freezing rises for three years. The BBI's boast of a zero per cent "increase" in council tax has simply left the borough further behind in income terms and grappling with finance problems that are partly self inflicted.
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