Councillors have deferred handing over the running of March Christmas lights to a committee of volunteers to give themselves a chance to seek legal advice on the new group's constitution.
The move to make the March Christmas Lights Committee separate from the town council, which has been behind the lights for dozens of years, was made at the December meeting.
The proposal had come from Mayor Cllr Andrew Woollard.
The decision also comes amid public anger over the late turning off of last Christmas's lights and the taking down of them by contractors.
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They were still up and on until mid-January, causing speculation and comments on Facebook about what was going on and who was responsible for the situation.
Cllr Martin Field, current chair of the town council's March Christmas lights committee, presented a proposed constitution for the new autonomous committee at Monday night's meeting, but members were unhappy that they had only received a copy of the proposals hours earlier.
Cllr Field apologised for the delay in getting the proposed constitution out to members, but said it was basically a standard constitution suggested by the Charity Commission to groups like that, being set up.
However, Cllr Jan French said there was too much "legal stuff" included in the paperwork Cllr Field had produced, and she suggested the council needed to get legal advice before agreeing to anything.
Cllr Field said that the current committee would continue to run under the auspices of the council until the new group, which was to be called Friends of March Lights, was officially launched.
This prompted the town's clerk Sarah Lemmon to comment that she would not be doing any of the work involved with the committee.
She said the committee was going to be autonomous regardless of what was finally decided, and the group needed to start making preparations for that.
Cllr French stepped in to say that some members of the Christmas lights committee had been abusive to the clerk and that she had rung her in tears over some of the comments.
Cllr Field said he was unaware of such behaviour from his committee members, and asked for information so he could deal with the situation.
But he also pointed out the council was handing everything over to a group of volunteers, and that should be recognised. He said Ms Lemmon usually started preparations for the lights switch-on in January and February, and suggested that it should be happening now.
However, she replied by saying "there's nothing time critical, I just like to be organised".
She also criticised the late delivery of the proposed constitution, and said that the group had had two months to get things moving.
"Literally nothing has happened in that time," she said.
But Cllr Field said the lights committee had discussed becoming independent at its January meeting, and that they had then drawn up the constitution and asked members for feedback.
"I didn't have time to get everything together and to get it to you any sooner, as I only received the feedback on Friday," he said.
Cllr Nigel Spencer said he had read the documents, and he felt the document was trying to hold the town council to ransom, over some of the things being included, such as having the proposed £20,000 annual grant index-linked.
It was agreed to defer a decision on the constitution and the setting up of the new group to the February meeting so councillors could read Cllr Field's documents.
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