Last year this spendthrift Tory Council decided to set a budget that raided our Council Tax Reserves (again) to the tune of £5 million rather than properly tackling the Government’s efficiency target and holding reserves for a very rainy day – as you and I would – and as they would if it was their own money. Instead of £4m of efficiencies – as proposed in the Labour group’s 2008 alternative budget – they set a lower target of £2m and agreed to increase their expenditure on other pet projects.
Consequently they planned to have to find £8 million this year even before the economic downturn fully hit us last summer– a downturn that is denied by one of the increasingly irrelevant Council ‘payroll scrutineers’.
Now the Council Tories are in a position of having to fund an estimated shortfall of £12 million, as a result of the economic downturn. A further £4 million raid on our fast-reducing Reserves brings this down to a still scary £8 million.So an £8 million shortfall looms large over services and staff, with talk of 200 plus job losses and short-time working.
How an opposition group can offer an alternative is a real challenge this year given the mess the Tories have got things into. However, Deborah and I will come up with an alternative as we have at each of the last two budget rounds.
Maybe this year the other opposition party, the Liberals, will come up with their first alternative budget of this Council ?
Whatever, I am very happy to receive suggestions at my private email address – geofflumley@ gmail.com
19 comments:
The bare-faced cheek of a Labour councillor whose government have been raiding local council finances to fund the massive shortfall in their concessionary bus fares scheme! I would suggest that the mismanagement of public finances is coming primarily from Geoff's government, and their consistently unreasonable demands on local authorities! Apparently there is about a £4m gap for the Island between what the government funds the bus scheme for and what it actually costs. If it wasn't for this scandal the council finances would be a lot rosier!
I don't understand how a self confessed 'trade unionist' can complain that the Council didn't make efficiency savings (ie job cuts) last year and 'raided' reserves. In the past, this is exactly the action that UNISON and other 'jobs for the lads' self interest groups (ie unions) have advocated.
The savings now have to be made and the deferred job losses realised. Well, welcome to the real world lads - it's about time.
Because a Labour government has failed to reform local government finance, and the last Tory government made it far worse than it was before, any increase in council tax is going to hit people wholly unable to afford it. I don't actually recall the Labour group's budget proposals last year calling for job cuts, but cuts in spending are needed this year. We the public don't get to examine the council's books and we aren't in a position to influence the budget other than by answering the loaded questions in their pathetic house-magazine, so don't expect a reasoned analysis. However, just to kick things off: how about scrapping that publication, to start with, and using the County Press instead? How about scrapping the special allowances paid to cabinet members, and doing away with the laptops, Blackberries and other paraphernalia in which so many councillors seem to bury themselves when they might otherwise be paying attention at meetings? Dramatically scaling back on the number of committees and commissions, and the back-office support they need? Stopping all taxpayer contributions to the tourist industry which, if it can't stand on its own feet, isn't noticeably helped by the money we keep ploughing into it?
And while we're at it, could we have a moratorium on the use of outside consultants, who produce reports saying what the executives wanted them to say in the first place, and an end to the practice of re-hiring allegedly retired council staff in any capacity whatsoever, so we can have some idea of who actually does work for the council? How about recruiting new senior staff using our own local expertise rather than calling in those same consultants who bid up the going rate (and their own fees) and whose efforts last landed us with the likes of Joe Duckworth, who has trousered the hard-earned cash of people paid a fraction of what he "earned" during his brief and inglorious tenure of office?
Warming to this theme, could we have effective enforcement of dog-fouling and illegal parking and fly-tipping regulations, with fines substantial enough to pay for enforcement and actually do something about the problems they represent? (Another letter in the CP this week about the grubby state of the island, from a visitor: and if we haven't all heard this before, we're not listening - if some of the money used to publicize the island were spent on cleaning it up, it would at least provide us with some tangible value.)
Or come to that, how about a REAL consultation on efficiency and savings at County Hall, instead of a budget written by officers anxious to protect their own little empires and nodded through by a majority group which may or may not understand either the figures or the expenditure which they must meet and that which is discretionary and over-the-top?
Just a few suggestions.....
Finally, Geoff, I'm not sure I agree with you about reserves: I'd rather they were spent than invested in highly-collapsible money-markets; and I'd certainly rather see them spent than have an increase in my Council Tax.
Robert - as ever, wise and to the point.
This Labour government AND this Conservative council are at fault. Tax payers are being ripped off left, right and centre. Time to rise up methinks. How about some riots in protest, or is that only the lefties who indulge in that particular phenomenon?
I think, Geoff, it is rather worse than your estimate. Unfortunately there are very few employees left who know where the bodies are buried.
Oh I think not; there are still quite a few who know more than they'll ever tell.
And I will name names, unless a large sum is left in the blasted oak.......
Oh I think not; there are still quite a few who know more than they'll ever tell.
And I will name names, unless a large sum is left in the blasted oak.......
I would bet we could easily afford to lose 200 members of staff. My experience is we're over-manned in all departments. Why should the public sector not suffer as the rest of us are suffering? The global economy has gone into meltdown, thanks to greedy bankers and regulatory failures of US and UK government. While they were busy taxing us to death and fighting wars no-one can win the crisis was building right under their noses.
Now is a great time to dip into the reserves.
I can't understand why anyone would be pleased that 200 people on the IW could lose their jobs wherever they work. It is of no advantage to our small community if we have even more people out of work with no prospects of finding employment. If it is like the last time we had a recession it affected the Isle of Wight far more than the rest of the South of England and had a major effect on business investment for such a long time.
It's good news because the rest of us don't want IWC carrying on as if if nothing had changed. We are in the teeth of a terrible recession. Perhaps the worst the world has ever known. Councils cannot just behave as if nothing had happened. They should be cutting costs.
Of course it matters when 200 people lose jobs. The island as a whole will suffer because of it but open your eyes, we're already suffering.
I don't get this line of reasoning - the world is turning bad, let's make it worse. Neither do I understand the concept that because some groups are suffering, then everyone must - just because the others are. It's like going down the road and punching someone in the face because you've got tooth ache. It may make you feel better, but does it add any value?
Keeping people in work is better than laying them off - I think that we can all agree with that. Billions of our money is being spent across the world doing just that and afetr 20th January more billions will be used. The alternative is too awful to contemplate. Many of us recall our history and the political darkness than comes from an economic recession (and no, I don't mean Thatcher.)
Let's stop playing begger thy neighbour and start agreeing on ways we can ensure that our social and financial systems remain intact now that 'let it be' has been found to be a better song title than it was an economic theory.
I don't get your logic. I don't want anyone to suffer. This is about all of us having less money. Some of us have lost our job, some of us are earning less. Less money in the economy means less money for taxes. On that basis we can no longer afford to spend what we were because it isn't coming in.
Now would be a good time for pension reform for the same reason. Without it the entire country could become bankrupt.
pensions...give it a rest! It's like a broken record. Bankrupt? Are you mad? We're already in hoc to the sum of trillions of pounds, a few more billions for us hard up public servants won't matter a jot. Get a sense of perspective. Huh!
All this "snouts in trough" as opposed to "hard up public servants" stuff just fogs the issue. If I were the suspicious sort, I'd suspect that some have worked that out for themselves and employ it as a tactic.
damnnnnn. found out again....back to the drawing board!
50%. That's how many 'public servants' we could lose and still get the job done.
Not my opinion.
and whose forensic analysis was that from then numbnuts? (not my words)
You were right Geoff - 200 jobs to go and £8 MILLION short.. Oh dear.
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