Sewage Unit decision made

Just to be clear, for those people who didn't see the update on the end of the blog entry about the Sewage unit. This is a seperate entry that explains the outcome of the meeting a bit more thoroughly for those people who didn't see the updated bits.

This is what happened for the benefit of those residents who didn't stay until the end.
If you're unhappy with this, you should have stayed until the end!

Voting was as follows: 
(It was decided that non attendees would not be counted - one vote per occupied household)

Votes for: Robbie, Derek, Andy Haynes
Votes against: Carol, Theresa, Andy King

Deciding votes were then up to Puck and Frank's choices.

Puck after much deliberation for half an hour decided to vote against our proposal which resulted in:

Votes for: Robbie, Derek, Andy Haynes

Votes against: Carol, Theresa, Andy King, Puck

This left a Final Deciding casting vote which would result in either a stalemate or a vote of 5 to 3 to keep it "as it was", which was all down to Frank's final vote.

Frank did not want to make a choice, as he could see the merits of both situations - and proposed a third scenario to the remaining attendees as a new option to break the stalemate - suggesting that we should all pool our knowledge and skills between us - rather than having 2 seperate camps, which is a very weak position to be in - as it would have ended up with either the "Technical people", and "non-technical" people managing it. Saying it was not a sensible situation to end up with - we should be united so the skills we have can contribute end up helping reduce bills - so everyone who wants to help physically and is able bodied. practical and technically minded instead should be involved and helping us make decisions. Andy, Puck and I agreed with Frank's suggestion, as we are really not that "precious" about controlling it in isolation anyway - we'd prefer more people were involved generally.

How it will work 

Basically we will have a "sewage comittee" -  - but this time rather than being 3 of us - have more people to help decide what to do - 

e.g. Derek, Puck, Andy H, Andy King, Frank

membership of the committee is only conditional on two factors: 

1) only those that agree to contribute

2) able to help physically with lifting, are able bodied - as well as being practical and technically minded.

This will help us guide decision making in the best possible way for everyone's benefit. 

• Andy H and I will start by monitoring and measuring pump data for several months, which will require us to go in and take measurements and readings initially on a periodic basis - could be every day or every week - we haven't planned this yet. Obviously we're going to need the key to do this. We will not do anything to change existing equipment without having the relevant data and have consulted on our findings with the rest of the comittee and voted - abiding with a majority decision for any changes in equipment only via the committee.
• The £40 magic figure Andy and I proposed is something that now be dropped - instead we as a committee will do our best to do anything we can to reduce the bills to a sensible amount each year.
• Puck will be doing whatever he can to reduce billing and tariffs with the electricity company.
• Billing at year end in arreas will also not happen now it will be on a per quarter basis in arreas as before.

Hope that explains things better!