Last week the group in charge of Cornwall Council,
comprising ten senior Liberal Democrat and Independent councillors forming a Cabinet
under leader John Pollard, voted, 9-1, to spend a minimum of £536,000 of
Cornish taxpayer money on a bid for Truro to be the European Capital of Culture
for 2023. If successful the bid will cost as much as £25million in total.
Regular readers of my column will know that I am not shy to
hold Cornwall Council to account.
As an organisation they do many good things, and just last
week I was pleased to get an update on them on the work that is taking place
for the invaluable A30-A391 link road, the upgrading of the A3058 and the
continued excellent progress of Cornwall’s bus service devolution.
However the current leadership at Cornwall Council has been,
in my view, making increasingly baffling decisions on how to use your money for
the good of Cornwall. This is the latest one.
Those in Cornwall Council’s leadership often tell me, during
my regular meetings with them, that they have no money for essential work and
services, running from filling potholes to keeping public toilets open. They
publicly blame central government cuts on their issues. True, cuts have been
made and we all have to tighten our belts. However Cornwall Council is a
colossal organisation with a massive budget and as I have said in the past, it
needs to take some responsibility for it. To plead poverty in this way, but
once again find funding for a pet project is not, to me, the right way to run
things.
Of course, this is just another in a growing list of waste
of money projects by the Council’s leadership to add to the now infamous bus
lane to nowhere and the recent three quarters of a million pounds on a
pointless car parking consultation, the results of which I now understand they
have kicked into the long grass.
Looking at the papers that the Cabinet voted on there
appears to be a lot of support for the move from various organisations around
Cornwall for the bid. Indeed, many of them wax lyrical about the benefits the bid,
if successful will bring. However what they have all failed to do is commit any
money whatsoever to the scheme, leaving Cornwall Council as currently the only
funder.
Some say that you have to spend money to make money but I
believe, at a time where they say they don’t have money to maintain the most
basic public services, Cornwall Council should be prioritising its spending
away from projects like this and focusing on what matters. It isn’t their money
after all, it is yours.
Of course, apart from anything else, come 2023 we won’t even
be in the European Union. Could you see President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude
Juncker deciding to come along to open Truro as the centre of European Union
ideals and culture, at a time that could be five years after we have left the
EU?
This decision is a speculative gamble with taxpayers’ money
at a time when the Council should have other priorities. My hope is that they
will listen to common sense and reverse this decision before any money is
wasted.
