Midsomer Norton Town Council has appealed for the public to check out the calculations currently underway which will be used to set the budget - and therefore the local part of the council tax - for the coming year.

At the Town Council meeting on January 9, councillors were presented with options on how the tax could go up, depending on whether or not they agree to fund an assistant warden.

Within the overall budgets, some town events have been saved, including an Easter Fayre and there is an increase in spending on youth services in the town. There is also a payment of £48,904 to the loan for the Town Hall renovation.

That budget, showing wages, spends, incomes and monies which could be brought in from council reserves is HERE

You can read the update on other news from Midsomer Norton Town Council meeting HERE

Here are the discussions currently underway about the budget :

The working group also requested a comparison of the precept with the funding remaining for an assistant Warden against withdrawing the funding for an assistant Warden. The discussion between members was whether the new Council in May should be deciding if they require an assistant Warden. The Clerk advised that the recruitment of the role had previously been agreed. It had been clearly identified that there was a need for an additional warden due to the workload of the current employee and the assets and spaces that need maintaining. The Clerk also advised that if the already agreed funding is removed from the budget there would be no funding available for the new council to make the decision. Instead, the appointment would need to be delayed until the 24/25 financial year's budget or funded from reserves.

See the chart comparison below for keeping the allocated funding for the assistant Warden in comparison with removing the costs:

To be considered - Communications budget line.

No decision was made during the working group meeting. In previous years there was a budget of £14,000 for Midsomer Norton Life magazine. In recent working groups meetings, the consensus was to remove the whole budget.

In this current agenda there is an item for recording, editing and publishing council meetings. The following need to be taken into account: equipment for recording the meetings, equipment for editing recordings and staff time or contractor costs. A consideration needs to be made for this in the budget. Also to consider is the need for any advertisement as with a zero budget for communications provides limited resources for media and communications. Below is the comparison costing for £4,000 included in the budget for Communications:

In summary:

In addition to what has already been proposed by the working group the additional costing for the assistant Warden and communications budget the precept will equate to £498,961 an increase of £16.59 per year (15.68%). This is a monetary increase of £0.32 per week.

With removing the assistant Warden but with adding the communications budget the precept would equate to £483,611 and increase of £12.76 per year (12.06%). This is a monetary increase of £0.25 per week.

With removing both the assistant Warden and Communications budget the precept would equate to £479,611 and increase of £11.78 per year (11.13%). This equates to an increase of £0.23 per week.

For information the base rate for Midsomer Norton is 4078.62.