TAXPAYERS' money should not be squandered on providing badges as keepsakes for past Whitehill town mayors, town councillors have agreed.
The proposal to consider providing the badges was made to Whitehill Town Council in January by Basil Smith, himself a former town mayor.
Members of the full council agreed to support the idea, subject to more detailed costings.
The matter was then passed to the council's finance and policy committee to consider the financial implications.
Costings were put before the committee, but not made public, at a meeting on Monday.
Town and district councillor Zoya Faddy vehemently opposed any move to provide the keepsakes, calling them "trinkets" and saying there was too much money at stake.
"I think that the money would be much better spent on something that was going to benefit the whole community," she said.
Mrs Faddy suggested another way to honour the six past town mayors would be to plant a tree in Jubilee Park for each of them."
Chairman of the finance and policy committe Don Mayes, a former mayor, was asked by Mary Walters for his opinion.
He said: "I would rather not go down the avenue of having one."
He felt a past town mayor's badge would probably end up in a drawer somewhere.
Jean Fox commented: "I think that the time and the climate that we live in does not lend itself to this sort of thing and they are very, very ostentatious."
Mrs Fox said mayors were remembered with a photograph in the "rogues' gallery" displayed in the council chamber in the Forest Centre.
It was unanimously agreed to recommend to the full council that badges would prove too costly and a mayor's year in office should be remembered by something that benefited the whole community.