Please bear with Ferret today, this is a longer than average post, but the information is extremely important prior to tomorrows Extraordinary Council Meeting which has been called by Councillor Jean Eccles.
Ferret was intrigued to hear that the current Chair of Hemsworth Town Council, Jean Eccles (Independent) circulated a letter to councillors at meeting on the 10th November and called an extraordinary meeting to be held this week to primarily discuss its contents.
Jean apparently, has been actively studying finance under the expertise “teaching” of that famous financial guru Jim Kenyon, and the contents of her letter confirm, that after completing her 3 year course, she has graduated with honours.
She was even presented by the great teacher Kenyon himself, no less with a pointy hat with a D embossed on it and a “real” pen, but told to handle it with care as mistakes can’t be rubbed out as easy as with the pencils.
Contents of the letter reveal we’ve got it all wrong, and under Jim Kenyon’s chairmanship they have performed absolute financial miracles.
We are used to “Dim Jim” spending the same money not only once, but twice, sometimes even three times and of course his cabal councillors letting him, but now we have his star pupil Mystic Jean, trying the same cunning plan.
Back in 2019 the Independents ripped up all the fully costed budgets, which they inherited from the previous Labour Town Council. These budgets not only took into account the day to day running costs, but also allocated money to cover routine maintenance and capital projects.
The financial geniuses of Kenyon and Eccles, supported by Womersley instead lumped all the money into one pot, which they proceeded to plunder for their own every whim.
With the lack of budgeting, spending money by the hundreds of thousands on legal fees, having plans drawn up for the Kenyon and Womersley sports complex, our money and the reserves soon disappeared.
Then of course they tried to rescind the deal with Saul Construction, without paying compensation! Well that part makes sense, to them anyway and of course we ended up picking up the pieces and all the bills as usual.
Ferret digresses and back to the letter, Jean has used the mathematics formulas of adding up that Jimmy refers to as “his sums” and the lapses in memory of real world events that they masterminded, to create a fantastic amount of money that was left on his vacating of office.
Her “entitledship” must really not be used to handling money, well “royalty” seldom are, because she has created her own total of money that should be available to squander, sorry spend on her own essentials such as lifts, walk-in fridge freezers etc that could be gathering dust somewhere.
She has achieved this miracle by adding the precept income into her sums that is already allocated for essential use elsewhere.
Just as importantly she has also neglected to include all the outstanding and very expensive work they have omitted to do by spending the money, our money on herself at times or on unbudgeted purchases, for example diggers and engaging their own former accountant to make the books balance.
Ferret best not mention the lakeside bar conversion again, using unbudgeted money taken from set aside funds for previously identified work that despite her claims of record income has actually incurred loss after loss year after year or the Vengaboys debacle.
The cost of the remedial work for the pathways alone, at the Waterpark has now been revealed to be £53000. This is work that could have and should have been done “in house”, for the cost of materials only.
Ferret wonders just why and where have all our skilled staff gone?
Then there’s the Astra turf and the boilers and the general maintenance and so on.
The cost of all these items had not been included in any budgets for the last 3 years and there can only be two reasons for that, incompetence and /or to hide the amount of money that has been diverted from its intended purpose.
To try to present themselves as financial wizards and shift the blame for lack of funds on to their successors who have been in charge of the Finance committee for only the last 6 months is beyond belief.
Ferret has been and will continue to be critical of anyone who falls short of delivering what this community deserves at times, but here we have a situation that they have inherited and are now trying to pick up the pieces created by the cabal councillors.
Self-praise as they say, is no recommendation Jean.
Ferret has a better idea for “Jeanius Jean”, go back to using the pencils, put the paper away for colouring time, and pay back the money spent on the Farmers car park you own or the money spent on clearing the waterway at your home or the rubbish removal service to name but a few.
You may also like to consider refunding the money for the expensive laptop purchased by this community that you allegedly use.
Councillors please move “next business” and award Jeanius Jean a star to put on that pointy hat of graduation received from the Kenyon Skool that she prizes so much.
Pure Financial Jeanius: Straight From The Kenyon’s Skool of Ekomoniks sums
What next stabling friends’ donkeys free of charge at the Waterpark?
Erm hold on a minute, that sounds familiar…