Richard Baum

Tomorrow (Thursday 3rd July) the people of Bury will have their chance to vote in a referendum. The referendum will ask whether or not we should change the way the Council is run and have an elected Mayor instead. I will be voting “NO” in the referendum, and have already written about how a Mayor will cost a fortune and do nothing to stop congestion charging. But the biggest reason I have for voting “NO” is because an elected Mayor will be a disaster for local democracy.

At the moment, there are local elections in three out of every four years. So local people get the chance to elect a local Councillor almost every year, and the party with the most councillors runs the Council. There will be a Leader and a Cabinet making the decisions, and these will be scrutinised by the other Councillors and eventually voted or blocked. Who does the governing and who does the scrutinising can change every year, and if local people don’t like it they can change things regularly.

In addition to this, there are lots of decisions made at a very local level, at Local Area Partnerships (LAPs) like the one in Prestwich and the ones inb all the other small constituent towns of Bury. Local groups sit on the LAP and have a real say on Council policy and developments locally.

If we replace the current system and have an elected Mayor instead, we will be placing all of the powers of the Leader, Cabinet, and LAPs in the hands of just one person. And crucially, this person will only be elected every four years! What if the person we elect can’t do the job? What if his policies damage Bury? We’re stuck with them and him for years.

I believe that local people should be at the heart of decision making. I believe that if there’s an issue affecting a community, then the people of that community should have their say. We should make decisions at a local level, not give one person sat at the Town Hall the power to make those decisions.

Where the decision has an impact on all of Bury, let the Council as a whole decide. Don’t let’s give all the powers of the Council to one person and have them do as they wish. It might please some people, but if local people don’t like it then they are stuck with the Mayor for four years and won’t be able to change their minds. At the moment if the Council screw up, we can send them a message every year. We won’t be able to send that message to a Mayor.

A Mayor won’t mean that Bury will be cut from the types of bureaucracy that hamper the Council now. A Mayor won’t get bring any extra powers to Bury – it just means that the existing ones will be concentrated in one person.

So when you have the chance to vote on Thursday, consider whether you want more local power and the chance to elect Councillors to run the Council every year, or whether you want one person to hold power and sway for four years. I am for local and accountable decision making, not concentrating power centrally in one person, so I will be voting “NO” in the referendum.

Rick