THE first action of Monmouth’s new mayor was described as “a dangerous tactic” by a fellow councillor this week.

It was by the narrowest of margins that the newly elected councillor for Drybridge, Felicity Cotton, was elected mayor of Monmouth Town Council on Monday night (15th May), pushing deputy mayor Cllr Jane Gunter out of the running for the top seat.

It was the same eight votes to seven that saw Wyesham’s Cllr Kelly Jackson-Graham elected to the position of deputy mayor ahead of the other nominee Cllr Terry Christopher.

Paying tribute to her predecessor Chris Munslow, who lost his seat in the recent town elections, and Jane Gunter for their services to the town, Cllr Cotton thanked former and current councillors and said how she looked forward to working with them.

Getting down to business, her first wish was that the council should suspend all current standing orders - the rules by which the council govern itself in terms of order and structure - except the financial ones.

This, she proposed, should commence at the close of the meeting until the next meeting timetabled for 26th June.

Cllr Cotton invited all councillors to review the suspended rules. “The aim is that the reviewed standing orders as a whole can then be adopted at the next meeting so all town council work can continue unimpeded from that point,” she said.

Cllr Mat Feakins pointed out that the orders were a legislative document and didn’t think they should be suspended so that new members could “dissect and re-invent” them.

He continued to say that if the orders were suspended, it is likely the council would be without those orders for six months as legislative parties have to be consulted.

“We will be in a limbo and be unable to do the majority of our work or hold our meetings,” he added.?“It will be the worst thing you can do!”

“I think it is a dangerous tactic” he warned.

Cllr Feakins recommended the council maintain the present standing orders and ask members to come back to the next meeting with their suggestions.

Cllr Cotton replied by saying that she had no intention of challenging the legislative framework, but some of the additions to the template she did not agree with, such as the one on committees and sub-committees.

She added that it was the structure and membership of committees she particularly wanted to change. “For me the priority is to involve the public as much as possible and give them ownership on what we are discussing; the current rules do not allow that to happen,” she said.

It was agreed to defer the review and adoption of the standing orders until the next town council meeting.

Cllr Cotton then said that in her understanding there were some long-standing former councillors who may have an interest in continuing to serve on the various external bodies and that “maybe some members of the public who would be keen to represent the council as non-council members”, although it was not mentioned who those members of the public would be.

Cllr Feakins again advised that the risk for the council to put people forward “wearing our name tag” without having gone through some training or be an elected member would leave the council open to “accusations and diversions from outside interests.”

“If you are not careful we could put someone in the wrong position,” he said. “I would feel uncomfortable if a sub-group put someone forward who hasn’t been elected or signed the declarations.?“If the wrong decision were made, we would all be liable; this would be very dangerous in my mind.”

Cllr Cotton replied that she was prepared to leave it at this point and take some advice.

Wanting to defer that item on appointments, Cllr Cotton was persuaded on the advice of Cllr Feakins to confirm the appointment of councillors to some of the outside groups as some meetings had already been been calendared and it was expected that the town council would be represented.

With only 10 items on the agenda out of 30 dealt with, Cllr Feakins reminded the chair that standing orders dictated that the meeting should end at 9pm, in five minutes time.

Three more items were dealt with quickly and the meeting was brought to a close, the rest of the items being deferred.