Some Labour candidates seem set to repudiate their parties waste collection plans before the Council elections even take place on Thursday.
They have issued a leaflet distancing themselves from proposals which would see grey bins emptied only once every 3 or 4 weeks ,
Labours plans also involve the introduction of a £35/£37 charge for emptying green bins.
The proposals first surfaced at a special working group (http://tinyurl.com/YorkWRG) which was set up in 2012 to address the Council’s faltering recycling performance.
In late 2014 the Council “consulted” on various options for saving £1.5 million on waste collection costs over the next 2 years.
Only two options for savings were offered; a reduced frequency of grey bin emptying and making an annual charge for emptying a green bin (second and subsequent green bins already attracted a £37 a year charge).
Other choices actually involved additional costs for the Council.
click to access Council wb site
The confused nature of the consultation leaflet—which can be viewed on the Council web site at http://rewiringyork.com/2015/01/28/have-your-say-changes-to-public-spaces-roads-and-waste-collections/ – was heavily criticised at the time.
The Council was later to claim that around 11,000 responses had been received. The Council, however, refused to reveal the results of the consultation . No meeting was held to discuss either the responses or a preferred “way forward”.
In the meantime in February the Council (Labour and Greens voting together) approved a budget for the current financial year.
The budget included economies of £4.5 million from what the Council euphemistically refers to as “transformational savings”.
Of these, £1.07 million was to come from street services like waste collection. (http://tinyurl.com/Rewire2 ).
Having been given a hard time on the doorsteps over their plans to cut waste collection in the City (just about the only service that every resident uses in one way of another) it appears that some Labour candidates are now taking to the lifeboats.
Whoever takes over on Thursday will face a budget shortfall of over £4 million.
Unless the Councils vanity projects are abandoned, then the decisions are likely to hit the quality and quantity of street level public services.