The North Yorkshire Police Authority has followed the lead given by the Fire Authority in freezing its Council Tax level for a further year.
It has decided to take advantage of the governments offer to provide grant support to offset what otherwise could have been a 2.5% hike.
The move leaves the City of York Council as the only major authority in the region likely to implement a 2.9% Council Tax increase.
Groups getting DRR last year. Double click to enlarge
Over 100 local organisations receive rate relief on premises that they occupy in the City. An 80% discount is available under national legislation but the local Council can increase this to 100% if they choose to.
This 20% is known as “discretionary rate relief”.
Organisations must be non-profit making. The level of their revenue reserves must not be in excess of:
– 10 times the amount of the gross rates payable, or
– £10,000
(whichever is the higher).
Organisations must be primarily for the benefit of people who live or work in York.
The Council is proposing to reduce the budget available for this discretionary relief by £54,000 with effect from April 2013.
At the moment 103 organisations qualify for relief, they cover a wide range of organisations many of which are charities. They include sports, leisure, scouting and educational bodies.
In total, in excess of £200,000 was rebated last year.
Amongst the qualifying organisations are the Foxwood Community Centre, the Acomb Bowling Club, the Dringhouses Sports & Social Club, York Indoor Bowls and Social Club and the Acomb Sports Club.
The Council, have not indicated which organisations they intend to target but Labour in the past have hit organisations which are not registered as charities. Sports bodies with clubrooms are thought to be particularly vulnerable to losing the relief.
Garden waste collection may be scrapped
One service that every resident uses one way or another is refuse collection. The Council plans to cut expenditure on this service by £750,000 over the next 12 months with further reductions in later years.
So how will it affect residents?
Here is the top 10 list of implications
1. Charges will be made for replacement recycling boxes and bins & provision of black sacks.
2. Either charging for green bin emptying or scrapping green bin collection altogether.
3. Changes to bin emptying days. Grey bins may be on (say) a Monday and recycling on a Wednesday
4. Privatisation of refuse collection in 2013
5. Closing Beckfield Lane recycling centre after Easter.
6. Plans for a salvage and re-use centre axed
7. Number of litter and “poop scoop” bins being reduced by 20%
8. Fewer “barrowmen” will be picking up litter
9. Reduce waste minimisation advice
10. Charges for use of recycling centres for items like brick rubble
90% of residents responding to our last survey said that they believed that Councillors should live in the ward that they represent.
At the moment none of Westfield’s Councillors live in the ward (nor even west of the river Ouse)
Today we launch a new survey.
Please tell us whether you agree that Council Tax rates should be frozen for a further year? (see right)
Labour’s claims to be a party of economic responsibility have been undermined, with an announcement to increase borrowing by £20 million in their upcoming budget. Liberal Democrat Councillor Paul Firth has questioned whether this gamble which exposes York’s residents to substantial risk and expense is appropriate at this time.
Only just over a year ago Cllr Alexander was expressing his grave concern that the council’s debt had reached £116 million spuriously quoting similarities with the national debt of Greenland. Now with the stroke of a pen he hopes to add a further 17% increase on that debt. At the same time the proposed budget would impose a substantial increase in council tax of 2.9%, to go towards paying off the debt generated by the irresponsible borrowing, while at the same time reducing services imposing redundancies and cutting funding to voluntary groups.
Paul Firth, Liberal Democrat spokesperson for Corporate Services, commented saying “After criticising the City of York’s debt whilst in opposition, James Alexander seems happy to add massive increases to it now that he’s in power. Reckless borrowing from the last Labour government has brought the country to its knees and now he seems intent on bringing the same misery to York. He must learn that in challenging times the answer is not to pile onto a city’s debt whilst simultaneously hiking the taxes of those that live there”.
“It is highly questionable if this borrowing will provide the returns to the council that Labour seem to hope it will, and in the mean time York’s debt will continue to grow. This is a substantial amount of borrowing that we’re dealing with, and it seems that the move is being made without a clear plan about how that will translate into economic benefit for the city”.
Highways maintenance funding - Double click to enlarge
Ward committee budget - click to enlarge
caption]
Sad, but not surprising, to see the Labour spin machine at work in The Press. Some of the figures quoted in articles about the Council budget are just plain wrong.
Highways maintence expenditure is reducing by a massive 56%. The effect on the safety of our roads and footpaths will be dramatic
Similarly Ward Committee expenditure – on projects like security patrols, CCTV and improved parking arrangements and which have been prioritised by York Residents – will be reduced by an unprecidented 65%.
Click the calculations right – which have been verified by the Councils professional officers – for details.
The savings are not being used to help the less well off.
They will fund the interest payments on vanity projects like the £20 million borrowing on a “re-energise York” programme as well as the Council Leaders personal £1 million pa “delivery and imnnovation” slush fund.
Labour are proposing to reduce the number of streets that are treated with salt. A £10,000 a year budget cut means that fewer areas will see gritters in future, although Labour are not saying which streets will lose the service.
Coming in the wake of a weekend when the existing gritting provision was put under enormous pressure, fears have been raised that the move will lead to more accidents.
The Council also plan to leave salt bins out on the streets for 12 months of the year, prompting fears that they will be vandalised. The bins are normally placed in the Council depot in summer where they are repaired and refurbished.
The new Council budget will allow bins to be filled only 3 times a year in future.
The Council are however finding £500,000 as their share of a £6million plan to extend the Art Gallery
These are some of the services that the Council admits will get worst as a result of the proposed budget cuts.
Labours proposed public service cuts. Double click to enlarge
Summary of cuts being made by the Labour Council. double click to enlarge
A summary of where public services cuts will be made over the next couple of years has been published by the Council. It reveals the split by department.
It admits that £1.87 million in 2012/13 will come from “service cuts” while claiming that another £5.4 million represents “efficiency savings”.
On close examination many of the “efficiencies” are no such thing. They are cuts in service standards.
Reproduced below is a list of some of them.
We will publish a list of the cuts that the Council is now admitting to shortly.
Double click to enlarge
Beckfield Lane recycling centre
The Labour controlled Council has announced that they are closing the Beckfield Lane recycling centre.
The centre was due to have been replaced by a new “Salvage and Re-use centre” at Harewood Whin but this to has also now been cut from the Councils plans.
The decisions are bad news generally for York Council Taxpayers as the amount of rubbish land filled is likely to increase. This in turn will mean taxpayers facing a bigger bill for, the rapidly escalating, “landfill tax”.
The Acomb side of the City has done particularly badly out of the cuts imposed by the Labour administration. The Acomb Office is set to close later this month and the number 4 ftr bus service will be scrapped in May.
Hugh reductions in the amount spent on the elderly, children’s play and other neighbourhood improvements are also being implemented as ward committee budgets are slashed by nearly half.
Instead, Labour are pouring money into the City centre with gimmicks, like an extended “WiFi zone” and a £100,000 pay on exit arrangement at one car park, sucking funds away from other parts of the City.
NB. Car parking charges are set to rise by 20p an hour for York residents. The increase of between 12% (short stay) and 18% (long stay) is the largest in the City since Labour were last in power in April 2003.
