The Deal Town Council is planning to spend over £10,000 on new ceremonial robes and regalia, reports Kent Online, claiming that the current robes are in a condition of disrepair. They therefore chose to replace all 13 councillors’ robes and buy 10 male and three female councillor hats and one male and one female mayor hat, using money from the mayor’s parlour refurbishment budget.
The justification for this outrageous expense at the burden of taxpayers was made by Committee Chairman Cllr Trevor Bond who said “Most councils have a set of robes they wear because it’s very important when you represent the town for civic events. I believe it’s part of office”.
Whilst it is important to portray a smart look, this amount of money is overzealous and could easily be allocated to more important community projects. Lee Kettlewell supports this by criticising the expenditure as an “outrageous waste of public funds” and “all the more ludicrous because current robes are already available and not all councillors choose to wear them” He also said “I am sure I will not be alone in thinking that this is an outrageous waste of public funds”
“How ironic it is that this gesture of supposedly saving Deal Town Council money means actually to facilitate the excessive expenditure on robes and finery which are antiquated and unnecessary.”
“Better that the money was spent on deserving community projects or for the benefit of all who live in our town”
The willingness of the council to spend such amount of money on unnecessary robes shows how out of touch they are with the people they are supposed to represent particularly at a time whereby everyone else is trying to cut back on expenditure. This is a complete and utter waste of taxpayers’ money.