Pool plan to

make splash

with reserves

We were pleased to see that a special meeting of Boston Borough Council’s cabinet of curosities has been called for Wednesday - particularly as the previous meeting for the month was cancelled.
In our mind’s eye we pictured their bath chairs creaking off the sundecks and squeaking down Worst Street for a session doubtless to be filled with pith and moment –  probably mostly pith, given the track record of our leaders to date.
But, no.
The meeting will only consider the reopening of the training pool at the Geoff Moulder Leisure complex – plans for which have already been announced in some detail.
Flying in the face of their promise of openness and transparency – one of the few pledges the Tories made to bamboozle Bostonians to put them in charge – after a standing item snappily entitled "Recommendations from Overview and Scrutiny," the meeting will go into secret session.
In fairness, we have to say that a short "public version of the report" was slipped on to the agenda a few days after the initial details appeared – but it tells us next to nothing.
More than that, it creates confusion.
According to the original announcement, a five-year partnership between Boston Borough Council, the Witham Schools Federation and Boston Amateur Swimming Club, is looking at a service level agreement “which will cover the £100,000 a year cost of running the pool and lead to cash generation to help fund the facility.”
But later on, the same statement says that under the deal, the federation and the club will jointly invest £30,000 a year "to help with improvements and refurbishment at the pool."
That was the situation reported around three weeks ago – but now we see a different version ahead of Wednesday’s meeting.
Cabinet members will be asked to approve spending £195,000 from reserves, with £150,000 being repaid over five years from third party contributions, and the remaining £45,000 funded from the capital reserve – in other words, written off.
So what exactly is going on?
The original statement contradicted itself – firstly by saying that third party contributions would cover the pool’s running costs – then saying they would be used for improvements and refurbishment.
Now, it seems the plan is to dig into Boston’s reserves to the tune of almost two years' worth of running costs - of which £150,000 appears to be an “advance” on what the partners will be expected to repay over five years.
It would be nice to have all this explained more fully before the cabinet rubber stamps it - as it assuredly will – but sadly that is impossible, because the public and press are banned from hearing the discussions.
We learned last week that the borough’s record with sports facilities was worse than previously thought.
Veteran Boston journalist George Wheatman disclosed in his column in the Boston Target that trustees at the Peter Paine sports centre –  which was recently given away amidst great fanfare by the borough council to Boston College – were threatened that the centre would be closed if they didn’t spend £400,000 on refurbishment … or hand the lease back to Boston Borough Council.
It’s known as a carrot and stick approach – but without the carrot.
The iron fist in the iron glove.
Given the record of Boston Borough Councils and sporting facilities over the years, we get very nervous.
Are we looking another PRSA in the making, we wonder?

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