POSSIBLY the most important local story of the week for all of us is the one most of us are likely to flick past on the grounds it looks boring.

The tale of the ‘Pathfinder’ project is replete with jargon and local government complexities. Any normal reader may well find the saga a turn-off and just ignore it.

And that is the core of the problem because, as far as I am concerned, there is nothing more crucial for us to debate in Bucks.

Pathfinder was meant to be a way to save lots of money by sharing services across our various councils.

Sadly, after years of talking the talk and spending around £1.2m, our councils announced last week they had decided to formally drop the project – and close its office in County Hall – for a variety of reasons. The idea of merging services will continue to be explored but not under this official regime.

Maverick Lib Dem councillor Julia Wassell articulated the fury many of us feel when she told a meeting last week that Pathfinder was a disaster.

She then called for district councils to be abolished on the grounds they are “very little commissioning bodies and deliver few services”. Fair point, but what reaction did she get from other councillors in the chamber?

I’ll tell you what the feedback was – laughter.

There was then a lecture from one of her fellow councillors about unitary authorities not being necessary.

They really don’t get it, do they?

I know Cllr Wassell can wind them up at times and I understand her comment was bound to rile a few of them.

But, quite frankly, I am riled as well. I am riled by this overblown undemocratic system of local government in Bucks.

In south Buckinghamshire alone, we have three district councils and one county council. That’s not to mention a mass of parish councils, a police authority and a fire authority.

The Chief Executive of Bucks County Council earns more than £200,000 per year. I don’t begrudge him that, because I believe we should pay top people top salaries.

However, I do begrudge paying top salaries to three other council chief execs in the south of the county, all of them probably earning well in excess of £100k.

I do begrudge funding a wealth of officers, offices and council positions for four different overlapping local authorities who operate in the same relatively small half of the county.

I do begrudge the fact that despite all of this supposed local democracy, my own town of High Wycombe is one of the only places without a parish council. Even the smallest of hamlets has one, but we’re told they don’t want to top up the bureaucracy where my town is concerned.

That’s why there is no formal independent local council to defend our pigeons when the district bods decide to cull them. That’s why there’s no independent local council to defend our open air swimming pool when they decide to close it.

High Wycombe is lumped in a peculiar district along with Marlow and Risborough (both of whom have town councils, by the way). Meanwhile, most of the major services are run from County Hall in Aylesbury.

When we turn up to civic functions, we are met by a confusing mass of chains celebrating the fact that someone is a mayor and someone else is a chairman. But then you have to explain that they don’t run the council: the leader and the chief exec do that.

But when you ask the leader and chief exec to help, you might well be referred to another local council. Or it will be blamed on the Government. But, despite all of this, councillors who suggest changing the system get laughed at by their colleagues.

Maybe Julia Wassell could have phrased it better, who knows. But she’s right in essence.

Around 15 years ago, an attempt was made to create a unitary authority – in other words, one main local council for your area.

For whatever reason, the plan got kicked out and the old bewildering status quo remained.

Meanwhile, in nearby Windsor and Maidenhead they formed a unitary and it appears to have worked. Can anyone explain why they can do this and we can’t?

Later this year, I am participating in a series of public consultation meetings aimed at helping the county council save money. I accept the council, through no fault of its own, has to make massive savings due to recessionary pressures.

Fair enough. But, in my book, this council shouldn’t even exist.

Pathfinder was hailed as an alternative to unitary authorities. It clearly hasn’t worked, so isn’t it now time to go back to the original idea of a one-size-fits-all council?

How about just one main council, one chief exec, one directly-elected mayor for the south of Bucks? Scrap the districts and county councils, but maybe retain the cheap hyper-local parishes.

I know the councillors will laugh at my naivety.

But the public won’t. They want a system they can understand.

One that represents them and their local towns – and one which sweeps away the prehistoric apparatus currently strangling almost everything in public life in Bucks.