If you thought there was a fight over this years Budget, next year's could be worse. The big debating point is whether Council Tax should go up. Have a read of the following from February's Full Council meeting. Its a long transcript taken from the webcast but this is the first argument about next year's Budget so it matters.
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Cllr Ian Driver: Yeah. Thanks
Chair. Im gonna be supporting the recommendations but I think one thing that
nobody’s mentioned yet and hopefully people will start talking a lot about and
thinking about in the next year is where do we go from here. It really is…it
really would be an economic miracle if we can continue to deliver services at
the already reduced level we are delivering them in another year. There’s
simply not the scope for further efficiency savings. There’s not the scope for
re-organisations to save money. We’re running out of scope for actually cutting
back and reducing services and goodness knows they are already reduced enough
anyway. And as well we cant carry on
year on year giving the zero per cent pay rise to our staff or a one per cent
pay rise in the case of Thanet when the cost of living is actually increasing
at four per cent and beyond. So options have run out, this year is probably the
last year when we will be able to get away with a zero per cent Council Tax
rise and that I would say that all parties should give serious consideration in
that planning for next year’s Budget, to look at the possibility of increasing
Council Tax, and its not just me just saying that because its not been said so
far. Tonight, Brighton and Hove Council are meeting tonight to debate a 3.5 per
cent increase in Council Tax and if the BBC are to be believed, Labour-run
Nottingham, Leicester, Darlington, Middlesborough, Barrow-in-Furness,
Stoke-on-Trent have all voted to increase their Council Tax and it doesn’t stop
there. Surrey, Chelmsford, Peterborough, Tory-run authorities are also
increasing their Council Tax. The days of cutting back, saving, re-organising,
driving down the wages of the people delivering the important social services
are coming to an end. There’s no more wriggle room and this Council, if it does
want to continue to provide decent services to the men, the women and the
children who live in Thanet and the tens of thousands of visitors who come
here. Next year we should be talking if we have no other options seriously
about a sensible increase in Council Tax.
Clark: Thank you. Cllr Nicholson.
Cllr Nicholson: Yes. Thank you Chair. The Town Council precept
for Ramsgate was mentioned. I think I should point out that there are several
factors at play. One was the low tax base that we were starting at, therefore
any increase was going to be in percentage terms vastly inflated. However, the
organisation and the way that Ramsgate Town Council is run is very efficient.
I’d also like to put on record, even though it isn’t really any business of
this Council that the cross party support from the Conservative Member on
Ramsgate Town Council voted to accept it and agreed it. And I’d also like to
remind Members, at a previous Council meeting when a motion was moved,
requesting free parking in Birchington, yes, some of the more excitable Members
from the Party opposite, not all of them, but some of the more excitable ones
were shouting “If you want it, let Birchington Parish Council and the people of
Birchington pay for it”, so you can’t have it both ways. We will ensure a tight
ship over that side of the island and work to the benefit of the people of
Ramsgate who decided that they wished to have a Town Council. Thank you.
Cllr Clark: Cllr Green.
Cllr David Green: Thank you Chair. I’m surprised actually at
the bare-faced cheek of the
Leader of the Opposition to comment on Ramsgate
Town Council’s precept because only months ago now, the people of Ramsgate
totally rejected the Party that is in opposition and voted for a manifesto that
we put forward for the Labour Party that explained that we needed to try in a
small way to address the total neglect that his administration at TDC had
imposed on Ramsgate. The residents of Ramsgate know that, that was existing,
they wanted to put it right, they wanted small things done that would improve
the environment and the vitality of Ramsgate and I’m pleased to say that over
the coming year we are well equipped to do that, that change.
Cllr Clark: Cllr King.
Cllr King: Thank you Mr Chairman and I would like to very
much concur with what Cllr Driver said tonight, and I do welcome the fact it’s
good to see some of the Councils now beginning to see the wood from the trees.
The £2.5m that was rejected by I think Brighton Council in favour of a small
Council tax increase and the return of real local services, services that had
been cut to the bone for far too long, and it is right. I concur with Cllr
Driver this cannot go on for very much longer, this is probably going to be our
last year. All this will ever do is see the demise of real services. Now we are
told for example and Im looking again at the street cleaning service, this is a
disgraceful excuse of a service. 25 percent of the streets of Thanet get swept.
75 go unswept. This is not good value for anybody’s money and it in no way is a
first-class service delivery. Our streets constantly are reported to me in
Westgate which I serve as, with dog fouling. One of the biggest issues, dog
fouling. We have a machine that can do the necessary work to remove it but we
have no funding to have it operating. We need dog wardens to try to catch the
perpetrators of this anti-social behaviour but we can’t afford to employ them.
There is no such thing as a free lunch and if you are going to buy cheap you
going to buy twice. So lets look at this at the backdrop of this area and the
health of this area. This is one of the poorest and most deprived areas in the
South East. In a recent National health report there were 32 indicators of
deprivation and 15 of them were indicated for Thanet. Deprivation, child
poverty, crime, smoking in pregnancy, least physically active children, teenage
pregnancy, least physically active adults, obesity, mental health, alcoholism, diabetes,
death from smoking and of course if you’re a man you die 10 years earlier and a
woman 5. Now, you’ve got to look at it that you cannot keep on cutting back, if
you are gonna improve the life of people in this very much deprived area and I
fully support what Cllr Driver has said and that next year we must seriously
look at implementing a small, modest rise in Council Tax. Thank you Mr
Chairman.
Cllr Clark: Thank you Cllr King. Cllr Wells.
Cllr Wells: Thank you Mr Chairman. I would have to say
I do wonder what planet some of my colleagues in this Chamber are on. They do
admit to living on the planet Thanet but I think sometimes they have to look a
bit wider afield to see exactly what is going on around us. In the week in
which 53% haircut was taken as it’s called by investors in Greece, and Greece
has narrowly avoided temporarily at least going to the wall, to hear calls for
Council Tax rises, but only small ones Tom relative to what one can afford no
doubt, in a circumstance where we are unlikely to see economic recovery because
of the trade situation with the European Union, I wonder sometimes if I’m alone
in understanding that calls for enhanced increased expenditure in such
circumstances is actually catastrophic. There are situations where you can
juggle within the Budget you have got, and if we were to have presented a
budget from whoever presents it this point next year, which took some of those
things that were not priorities, that were not as important to people and put
forward the things that people wanted to do within the context of the money we
have got, Im sure it would attract general and widespread support. To talk in
terms of increased Council Tax, to talk in terms of increased and enhanced
budgets, to talk in terms of looking at how and where this country has lived
for almost 30 years beyond its means and to go back to that within in a matter
of months is something I thought we would not hear for some time as common
sense actually put its head forward. And whilst I enjoy Cllr Drivers many and
varied interventions I think in this case, he should remove his head from his
backside and think.
Cllr Ezekiel: Its always easy to follow that. I think Cllr Wells
has articulated very well the position we find ourselves in and I think we still
need to look at that zero increase next year. Its going to be tough. There are
always tools, new management tools. Universities are developing these
management tools that we need to ensure we are aware of and put in place. There
are always machines if you want, that can do the work of other people. We do
need to ensure our Council is run the most efficient way possible with the
budget we have. I do feel even talking about an increase is wrong. We should be
always looking to decrease. If were a private business you cant go out there
and just increase your expenditure or your products. You have to look at other
ways and continually look at other ways of reducing your expenditure in these
very very tough times. And it saddens me when you have to lay people off, when
I’ve had to lay people off because of reasons of trade or whatever but it also
pleases me that there are small shops that are surviving and doing extremely
well, and they are doing extremely well in Margate, in the Old Town, in
Cliftonville, in Ramsgate. Just changing the subject slightly, I’m a little bit
concerned to hear about the efficient Ramsgate Town Council. It can’t be as
efficient as what the Charter Trustees were for example. I understand exactly
the issues now that they can’t raise 137 but again we could be looking at other
alternatives, which is what I propose, that we do look at other alternatives. I
don’t want to go into details of that, but there is a ways and means where we
don’t need expensive town councils ‘cause they are expensive. Let’s not run
away from that, they are, and there are different ways this Council could raise
funding and direct it specifically through community groups, through other
agencies, that could deliver with Councillors being on a Board of Trustees or
whatever for example, that means Cllr King, you could have a share of dividend from
your Westgate residents without an additional cost or a very small increase.
The amount to you would be significant. I suggest you explore some of these
avenues rather than just say “We’ll increase tax”. That is not what we are
about on this side. We will continue to look for other ways of being efficient
and delivery and there are more modern ways to do that. Thank you Chairman.
Cllr Clark: Cllr Moores.
Cllr Simon Moores: I
wanted to express my support for one of Cllr King's statements and I did have a
meeting with Officers on Monday on my shadow portfolio and I would say that
we are suffering from an epidemic at the moment dog mess. It was something that
I was going to look at. In fact I started the ball rolling in November of last
year because we have an epidemic of dog mess, we have an epidemic of anti-social
behaviour in regards to the ownership of dogs and we have problems with
dangerous dogs in Thanet too, and I would urge Members opposite and in fact my
Opposition colleague to look at this more closely, we need to actually
establish probably a regime of zero tolerance or at least try a great deal harder
to deal with a problem which is affecting a great many people in Thanet and been
stressed to me by residents of the Westgate Residents association or indeed
colleagues in Birchington. I cannot walk from my house in Westgate to the town
without for example treading in something on the way and the same way when I
walk to Margate on Monday for that same meeting I saw the same problem all the
way across the seafront into Margate itself so I would urge members opposite or
indeed my Cabinet colleague opposite to please take appropriate steps to try
and mitigate the problem that we are now seeing with greater regularity in
Thanet. Thank you.
Cllr Clark: Cllr Driver, you’ve already spoken but is this going
to be a point of order or personal explanation?
Cllr Driver: Yeah Chair, and I was named but wasn’t quick enough, but I tend to be polite in my interactions
in this Chamber and the talk of heads and arses is hardly appropriate form a
man I could talk of beards and genitalia. And I do not take lessons in
economics from a man who masterminded a community hall in Broadstairs that
would have bankrupt the local Council. And I do not take lessons in economics
from a man who’s member of a party whose government will not introduce a Robin
Hood tax on the bankers.
Cllr Clark: Cllr Campbell.
Cllr Campbell: Thank
you Chair. I’d just like to put this in context of the situation this Council
actually finds itself in. The Government whose representatives opposite here have
enacted a 29 per cent cut in the grant that’s given to Thanet. They haven’t cut
that to the rich people of Ashford or Royal Tunbridge Wells. They’ve enacted it
on the poorest area which is Thanet. That’s the situation we find ourselves in
and that is why the services for this Council are diminishing. The fault lies
with this Government.
Cllr Clark: Thank you. Cllr Harrison.
Cllr Harrison: I worry sometimes Chair that the members
opposite have lost sight of the fact why we’re here, why we’re elected, why we
stood for election because as I understood it to represent the people in our
various wards and to try and make life a little better for them, try to somehow
maintain what they already have. Well that means providing things like street
sweeping, it means providing things like flowers in parks, it means keeping our
open spaces what they already have and so I just worry that sometimes people
get so wrapped up in this cut cut cut cut cut, it just seems to me they get
some perverse satisfaction from making a cut here or making a cut there. No,
its wrong, its completely and utterly wrong. And in this party we’ve always
accepted that if you want a service, at some point its got to be paid for. At
the end of the day, whether you run a local authority or whether you run a
business, if you have a business providing a service to somebody, the user pays
and that’s the basic principle, you cant get away from it and its exactly the
same in local authorities. If the residents of an area demand services from
their local authority, they have to be prepared to put their hands in their
pockets and pay for it. And if at some point it means an increase in their
Council Tax, well so be it. And you do have a duty and a responsibility to keep
that increase to a minimum, but if people are demanding services from a local authority,
whatever local authority, it has to be paid for, and at the end of the day the
user pays. Let’s remind ourselves while I’m on my feet about dogs fouling and
zero tolerance and I know I’m getting old and senile and I forget things but I don’t
forget that I was the Cabinet Member responsible for the introduction of the dog
fouling legislation in this District. I was the Cabinet Member at the time and
as far as I know we still do, we hold the national record maximum fine for dog
fouling and that was approaching £800 from memory when somebody allowed their
dog to foul. I’m very proud of that, but of course lets march forward to 2003,
whenever it was when all of a sudden dog fouling wasn’t a priority anymore and
we found the dog wardens slowly disappearing from around the island, pop pop
pop pop pop until eventually they all
went and the last dog warden was I believe is now working as security in the
reception downstairs. So yeah, lets not have any more lectures and lets not
have anymore bleating about all the dog fouling and how terrible it all is because
remind yourselves who removed the wardens from this Council, it was you lot
over there in 2003.
Cllr Clark: Cllr King, you had your hand up but you’ve spoken,
have you got a point of order or personal explanation?
Cllr King: No, I was named actually Chair. Id like to reply. I
was named by the Conservative Group.
[a bit about responding to being named]
Cllr King: Maybe I believe that I have been misrepresented by
what’s been said about my attitude and what I’ve said here tonight regarding
Council Tax. We’ve heard here tonight the term “tough times” and “tough
decisions”. Would somebody probably from the, I won’t name anybody, but from
the Conservative Group like to tell me what their interpretation of a tough
decisions is, that has to be made by a multi-millionaire? Is it the same tough
decision that is being made by an old age pensioner couple on a high rise
estate who have to say "Shall we put our radiators on tonight or shall we have
something to eat"? Is that the kind of tough decisions? These are the kinds of
tough decisions, this is the kind of attitude I’m coming from. Mr Chairman, I
haven’t finished, because the attitude that is coming from the Conservative
Party tonight is to me, it is their trying to promote not so much the trying to
tell us about the deficit and this is why we’ve got this terrible bills to pay
and this deficit to pay. Is this really about that, or is this a return to some
old ideology, an ugly ideology, one that last raised its head about 25 years
ago? It was a time when the long shadow of Thatcher had spread all across this
land, the time when the rich got richer and the strong got stronger, and the
weak and the poor got left to fend for themselves. Is this the road we’re gonna
go back on? Is this the road we’re gonna go back on? That’s where Im coming
from, Mr Chairman. Thank you for listening to me.
