The Lib Dem’s admitted this week that the Theatre was nearly six months behind schedule because the Council’s business partners had not transferred the required funding. They forgot to tell anyone about it though!
There was huge controversy in the summer of 2005 over the Lib Dems breaking numerous promises by providing £3m of taxpayers’ money, opposed by the Conservatives, to own part of the Theatre property company. The Council’s majority "partners" in the company are General Mediterranean Holdings (GMH) and Kingston University, who pledged £3m and £500k respectively. GMH would have the control of the company but the only action taken by the partners so far has been to name directors to the company.
We had a Council meeting last week at which the Lib Dems admitted that: “I have to be honest, the money (from GMH) has not yet been transferred.” They also failed to rule out any additional council funding being provided to keep the Theatre running in the meantime. Could be another 1/2 % increase in Council Tax?
We were all informed in June 2005 that the "deal" was being rushed through without the opportunity for proper Council scrutiny because the building work needed to start in September 2005 to meet the plan of opening in September 2006. Part of that deal was to fund the running costs of the theatre staff up to the opening in September 2006. It does not take much to work out that the theatre will need six months more running costs and it has only one source of income - the Council tax payer!
The Conservative Group have asked me to be a Council appointed trustee on the Kingston Theatre Trust because despite the fact we disagree with the idea of the Council funding the theatre we need to ensure that the money the Lib Dems have allocated is spent wisely.
2 comments:
Kevin - you state that the Conservatives supported the idea of a theatre but opposed such a venture being funded by public money. Where on earth did you thik the money would come from? It was unlikely to fall fro heaven.
Until June last year all the parties on the Council agreed that this was the way forward. The Lib Dem manifesto at the 2002 Council elections said:
"We will give the Kingston Theatre Trust every support to raise the funds necessary to equip and run the theatre, but it is our view that local taxpayers money should not be used for this purpose."
http://www.kingstonlibdems.org/manifesto.htm
We agreed with that principle. The Theatre Trust was set up to raise funds for the theatre and they proved to be an utter failure, despite employing professional fundraisers.
Having failed there were other options that should have been explored and the Lib Dems did not nothign to pursue them; negotiations with a professional theatre company or discussions with the developer of the Town Centre they are negotiating with to put section 106 monies into this venture.
However, if these things failed then a decision needed to be made as to whether Kingston tax payers wanted a theatre.
Instead we have a theatre into which tax payers are paying huge sums and it stil may well fail.
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