It seems to me that everything that thousands of eminent, well-respected scientists are telling us, that the way we have lived our lives in this beautiful and privileged part of the world, is no longer going to revolve around what are essentially trivial issues.

And in saying that I don't mean to denigrate, in any way, previous hard work and good intentions.

But times have changed and will continue to change. We will need to arm ourselves with facts, have help in being able to cope with the necessary demands upon us and form ourselves into a mutually co-operative and resilient community.

To my mind the present Wells City Council is definitely "acting in the interests of the wider population of Wells".

Frome Town Council has an amazingly talented and energetic resilience officer, Anna Francis, who has instigated some brilliant schemes to support all the people of Frome and has recently won an international award for their community fridge initiative.

What this does is prevent food being wasted at the end of the day in local bakeries, supermarkets, fruit and veg shops and is instead collected from the fridge, by absolutely anybody in the town who could make good use of it.

A resilience officer, sustainability officer, call them what you will, with all the training and knowledge that they come with, makes it their business to seek funding, grants and apply for them, for the benefit of the local area; to raise awareness of what might be heading our way, understand the best way to deal with it, to prepare us for shocks.

Someone I know refers to the "future beach in Wookey". It sounds amusing, far-fetched, "a pessimistic prophesy of doom" but look at the predictions for Somerset when the sea levels rise in a couple of decades.

We can't just panic in any of this unsureness, but we will need professional help from someone who is dedicated to finding information and helping us to implement it.

Wells City Council will be seeking to employ such a person sometime later this year and this will assuredly be "in the interests of the wider population of Wells".

To this end a small increase will be added to the council tax for the residents of Wells. It is sad that this has been widely and mis-leadingly advertised as "a rise of 23 per cent".

In effect, this is not 23 per cent on the whole of the council tax but a small part called the Wells precept.

In the past five years Wells has been the fourth lowest in the five Mendip towns in implementing this, so it is certainly not an exorbitant request.

To quote percentages is in itself confusing and unhelpful, and really amounts to meaningless shock tactics: a rise of 1p to 2p is a rise of 100 per cent.

And surely if a rise in the precept means that we are armed with knowledge of how to reduce our own energy bills, saving us money, and that the resilience officer will bring about many other benefits towards, for example, better public transport, more sustainable housing and so many other areas of the environment, it is money very well spent.

What it does mean is a 50p rise for a house in band E. I live in a house in band E.

Unfortunately, I live in St Cuthbert Out and I wasn't given the choice of being able to pay this tiny increase, which I would willingly have done, to support the city council and take our fair share of responsibility.

We are likely in the coming months to be asked to pay another precept for the restoration of the Bishop's Barn.

If asked I would pay it: it is a beautiful, historic building that has been allowed to fall into disrepair over many decades and could be a great community facility.

I remember playing badminton with snowflakes coming through the roof. Will this precept request cause a similar fuss from the same source?

I have attended council meetings over the last year, as an interested member of the public. I have witnessed some astonishingly committed work by people who are not there to blow their own trumpet but who have realistic, practical ideas of how to take our community forward in very uncertain times.

They should be applauded and lauded for their efforts and I for one am sincerely grateful that they are working for us.

By Julie Wright