A kick up the  assets -

more milliions mired

in mystery

They say that money talks - and when it talks in Boston, it’s usually to say “where am I?”
First there was the case of the infamous State Street loan - £1 million borrowed over 60 years at 11% in January 1991 to finance the council's capital programme for a purpose that remains a mystery. The considered view is that we’re stuck with it – but if it were possible, repayment would bring immediate revenue saving of £111,125 a year.
Now, we have an interesting fact from last week’s Policy and Projects Scrutiny committee meeting where a copy of Boston Borough Council’s draft corporate plan – ironically subtitled “A great past and an exciting future” – who writes this stuff? - showed that the borough’s assets have slumped by six million pounds between 31st March 2009, when they stood at £35m, and 31st March 2010, when they had fallen to £29 million.
No explanation was given to the meeting by Councillor Richard Lenton, the finance portfolio holder or the leader Councillor Richard Austin who, an insider tells us, according to his own criteria, was apparently boycotting the meeting.
One who knows about this sort of thing tells Boston Eye “It is possible to dispose of assets and explain to the council; it is possible to spend your reserves and explain to the council. But what the hell, this is the BBI we're talking about here.”
The small print in the report – such as it is – shows a fall in the value of the council’s land and assets of £3 million, a further £1 million drop in cash and investments, and a fall of £2 million in “money owed to the council” – which we presume means debts that have been written off rather than paid off.
We’ve written before about the contempt in which the BBI holds the rest of the council – including its non-cabinet members – and the voters who trusted them as a safe pair of hands to run the borough.
But simply to dispose of roughly 17% of council owned – and therefore publicly owned assets – without so much as a by your leave is disgraceful.
The council is already in a black hole from which there seems to be no escape, and instead of being open, honest and transparent about its finances, chooses instead to be secretive and to dance on the deck of the Titanic for as long as the orchestra continues to play.
As if all these millions are not enough, there is talk of a further £1 million – or thereabouts – due to Lincolnshire County Council’s Highway Department that we don’t know about. But what’s a mere million to the BBI?

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