BYE ELECTION CALLED BY ONCHAN COMMISSIONERS

[Fred the shred]

So it was announced on MR this morning that Onchan Commissioners are holding a bye election to fill the seat of a resigning member.    It is going to cost £10 ,000 and it will take staff of other duties, this is going to be an extremely short tenure as the elections proper are taking place in April.   The reason given is that some of the Commissioners are uncomfortable with making decisions when their number of members are down to 6 ,the fact that they have been running on 6 on and off due to the resigning member not been available to attend meetings for a while seems to have escaped their attention and there must have been a good number of times when through illness or other reasons they have not had a full house.    I scratch around a fair bit to pay around a grand, on time, every year and this waste of money does not sit well to put it politely.   Who in their right mind is going to stand for a few months it will probably be another walk in.   The test question is of course again if the Commissioners had been asked to fund this themselves I am sure there would have been a different decision made.   That is me done I am never voting at local level again.    

[thommo2010]

Onchan commissioners do provide some good entertainment on social media with their petty squabbling shame the rate payer picks up the bill

[Jarndyce]

22 minutes ago, Fred the shred said:

That is me done I am never voting at local level again.

By(e), by(e)…

[Fred the shred]

I am amazed it hasn’t been pointed out yet that there is already a topic regarding O.C. but really I am just frustrated at the way government local and the big boys spend money and then whine about having none spare.   O.C. are currently asking permission to borrow £200, 000 to do their headquarters up if they hadn’t have wasted £10,000 they would have only had to borrow £190,000 .    That is how it works don’t yer know…….obviously not 😬.   

[John Wright]

It’s foolish not to vote. Vote, campaign, stand.

Agree that it’s expensive for a 7 month term. But what price democracy?

As for the offices, it’s 52 years since they were built. Doing a bit of maintenance and a few upgrades isn’t unreasonable

[Tinpot]

1 hour ago, Fred the shred said:

So it was announced on MR this morning that Onchan Commissioners are holding a bye election to fill the seat of a resigning member.    It is going to cost £10 ,000 and it will take staff of other duties, this is going to be an extremely short tenure as the elections proper are taking place in April.   The reason given is that some of the Commissioners are uncomfortable with making decisions when their number of members are down to 6 ,the fact that they have been running on 6 on and off due to the resigning member not been available to attend meetings for a while seems to have escaped their attention and there must have been a good number of times when through illness or other reasons they have not had a full house.    I scratch around a fair bit to pay around a grand, on time, every year and this waste of money does not sit well to put it politely.   Who in their right mind is going to stand for a few months it will probably be another walk in.   The test question is of course again if the Commissioners had been asked to fund this themselves I am sure there would have been a different decision made.   That is me done I am never voting at local level again.    

Why not put yourself forward?

[Roger Mexico]

What's not clear from the Manx Radio piece, is whether the by-election had to take place anyway.  There's something called the six-month rule (they have in the UK as well) which means that if a seat on a local authority falls vacant, there doesn't need to be a by-election in there's a general election to the authority within six months - it's just left vacant till then.  The law seems to say:

[34] (3) Where a casual vacancy in any such office occurs within six months before the day on which the member whose office is vacant would regularly have retired, —

(a) an election must not be held under subsection (1) unless, on the occurrence of the vacancy (or in the case of a number of simultaneous vacancies, the occurrence of the vacancies), the total number of unfilled vacancies in the membership of the authority exceeds one third of the whole number of members

but otherwise (from subsection (1)):

in any other case, as soon as practicable after the date on which, by virtue of section 32(1), the vacancy is deemed to have arisen

So it's not clear that Onchan Commissioners should have been deciding either way (in the UK they do have a choice, though they usually decide not to), it all depended on the relevant date Logan resigned.  The next local authority elections are on Thursday 24 April 2025, ( 4th Thursday in April) but I'm not sure if the 'retirement' date is then or earlier or later.

There was a similar case in Onchan in 2019 when James Cherry resigned on the grounds the Board was "toxic", but he did so in late October which would have been just inside the six months - though of course the April 2020 elections never happened.