THE QUESTION was who would blink first.

Would councillors vote down the budget and Council Tax proposals, plunging the Council into turmoil, or would there be a last-minute deal?

A deal, there wasn’t.

But, faced with the possibility of Independent Group councillors and Conservatives banding together to block the budget, the Cabinet did offer a compromise.

That compromise – a 12.5% Council Tax rise this year – finally passed after a debate that involved more officer input than any previous budget.

The Monitoring Officer and Head of Legal, Rhian Young, faced with allegations that officers had engaged in “strongarm” tactics intended to intimidate well-known nervous nellies David Bryan, Michael Williams, and Mike Stoddart, carefully explained—three times—that she and the Council’s Director of Resources had been asked by several councillors what would happen if the Council did not set a budget. To inform all councillors and avoid confusion, they emailed their response to all of Pembrokeshire’s county councillors.

The CEO, Will Bramble, clearly exasperated by being asked the same question three different ways by three different councillors, deferred to Ms Young to reply on matters of procedure.

The Director of Resources, Jon Haswell, carefully explained his reservations about a 12.5% Council Tax rise.
Too many councillors were stuck on transmit and too few on receive.

So Mr Haswell had to repeat them. Twice.

During a break in proceedings caused by an equipment malfunction, the disembodied voice of a couple of councillors could be heard.

One, easily identifiable as Cllr Mike Williams, lamented that the connection indicator was “just going round and round”. He paused and added: “Like this morning, really.”

And that’s what it was like.

In truth, Cllr Williams’s observation about the proceedings was not his best contribution to the meeting.

After Cllr Alec Cormack moved the main budget motion, the Council’s Deputy Leader, Paul Miller, moved to suspend standing orders to place an amended budget before the Council.

After lunatic procedural shenanigans, Councillors eventually voted to let Cllr Miller lay his amendments and speak to them.

12.5% – more out of reserves, a different approach to the leisure budget, a restructure of back-office functions – and the proposed Council Tax rise fell from 16.31% to 12.5%.

Cllr Jamie Adams did his best to respond, but the killer blow came from Mike Williams.

The Tenby North councillor wondered if Cllr Adams opposed a 12.5% increase and the amended budget fell, would he then support a 16.31% rise as that was the only other proposal on the table?

There was no snappy comeback to that one.

Cllr Williams had shot Cllr Adams’s fox.

Cllr Adams wriggled and tried to get Jon Haswell to come to his aid. Unimpressed as the Director of

Resources was by a 12.5% Council Tax rise, he wouldn’t do Cllr Adams’s job for him.

Through gritted teeth, Jon Haswell said he was satisfied the 12.5%  rise met the Council’s obligation to set a balanced budget for the coming financial year.

He added, however, that next year’s budget would be trickier than forecast.

Conservative Group Leader Di Clements expressed her reservations about the last-minute changes to the budget.

Her principal concern was that the figures used to justify a 12.5% rise had to be taken on trust, as they had not been scrutinised.

She also observed, with frustration, that waiting until the last minute to pull a budgetary rabbit out of a hat was not good for building consensus.

It all looked to be drifting to a vote when, with a speech written and not wanting to waste his opportunity to get his deathless oratory into the record, Cllr Jamie Adams moved to give more time for speakers to address the amendment.

Cllr Adams’s speech wasn’t about the amendment.

First, taking the good points he made, local government funding is a mess. Wales has far too many councillors. The local government system is deficient. How councils get grants and what they are allowed to spend them on is wrong.

So far, so good. Nothing to disagree with there.

However, Cllr Adams then decided that with a speech written for a debate that wouldn’t happen, he had to score some political points.

Cllr Adams complained that the administration hadn’t been bolder with Council Tax increases in the past to avoid the present crisis.

Cllr Adams did not acknowledge that he and the IPG had opposed and engaged in guerilla warfare against the Council Tax rises that would have avoided the present crisis.

The Cabinet, Jamie Adams declared, was too focused on the jam and not the bread and butter issues.
Councillor Adams failed to mention the number of white elephants he’d left littering the capital budget.

Cllr Adams said the current administration had been in place for seven years, so banging on about the previous one’s addiction to the “Lowest Council Tax in Wales” was jolly unfair. Put a pin in that thought.

Cllr Adams then mentioned he’d examined the figures behind the Children’s Social Care budget and accused Cllr Paul Miller of sleeping on the job for not paying attention to it. Put a pin in that thought.

Finally, Cllr Adams said the Cabinet had only cobbled together a compromise because it knew it would otherwise lose the vote and its remaining time in office was short.

Step forward, Cllr Tessa Hodgson.

She began gently. Cllr Adams, she reminded him, had been the only person in the room to mention the previous administration and the lowest council tax in Wales. Nobody had mentioned his administration.

She said the Cabinet, of which she is a member, is focused on the here and now.

She then reminded Cllr Adams of how the Cabinet works. Cllr Miller does not have the Social Care portfolio; Cllr Hodgson does.

Highlighting the IPG’s old boys’ nature, she suggested that instead of addressing his remarks at Paul Miller, he should address them to her. The implicit criticism of Cllr Adams for directing flak at the Deputy Leader because he is a member of the Labour Party was clear.

Cllr Hodgson not only defended the Council’s handling of the Social Care budget but also pointed out that unplanned and unanticipated cost increases in service delivery were, by their very nature, not something anyone could anticipate. The cost of delivering services had shot up, the demand increased, and the Council had to provide them.

There was no alternative budget on the table.

It was the sort of firm smackdown needed to draw a line under a fractious debate that spent more time speaking about what members said they felt about setting the budget than any real engagement with the budget itself.

When Cllr Miller’s amendment to the budget passed by 32-26, the Council had managed to dodge a bullet.

Having been marched up to the top of the hill by the IPG twice in the last year, the Conservatives will feel deflated.

They’ll be invited to hitch their wagon to the IPG again in May as the Independent Group tries to form another administration.

Who and what they’ll be able to rally behind is anyone’s guess.