Last night I attended a special meeting of Bury Council. The meeting was to agree the “question” to be put to voters in the Mayoral Referendum on 3 July 2008.

Unlike normal meetings of the full Council, which tend to go on till 10pm, the meeting was very short with only one agenda item. Councillors took note tf the responses from members of the public on what things would be like if we had an elected mayor in Bury.

We agreed:
- that the Mayor should work with a “cabinet” of Councillors, including councillors from opposition parties
- that the Council’s “scrutiny” procedures should be improved
- that the Elected Mayor would be the “first citizen” of the Borough, and that the person who Chairs meetings of the Council (currently the “Mayor”) should be known as the “Chair of the Council”.

So now the people of Bury get to decide whether to have an Elected Mayor or not, in a referendum on 3 July 2008. Lib Dems are opposed, and we’ll be campaigning hard to stop this undemocratic waste of money.

tim