Jargon used to hide York Councils real intentions
Residents attending today’s “drop in” at the Acomb Library (1:00pm – 5:00pm) should beware.
They will be talking to the “rewiring” team about changes to “place based” services.
Use of jargon and euphemisms is a well tested way of disguising the true motivations and intentions of corrupt organisations
In reality the proposals in York include plans to charge for waste collection while making local residents responsible for managing and maintaining local parks and open spaces.
Council to charge for refuse collection
The PR campaign is part of an emerging trend with the Council encouraging other propaganda initiatives aimed at influencing public opinion…..while being economical with the facts
These may include the ostensibly independent (business led) @YorkLocalPlan twitter account.
This group advocates building “at least” 850 additional homes in the City each year and erroneously claims that there is only room for 5000 to be built on brownfield land. In fact, over 2000 additional brownfield planning permissions have been granted during the last 2 years…. all on brownfield sites which were not identified on the draft Local Plan for housing. More are in the pipeline.
Still at least that organisation is unashamedly driven by vested commercial interests.
More worrying is the impenetrable “rewiring” project. It aims to save over £4.5 million a year for the Council.
Of this £800,000 will be cut from street level public services.
It is dressed up as a devolution project in a report to the Councils Cabinet next week
The reality is given away in a paragraph in another report which says,
” Community Open Space Management – As part of the review of Place Based Services the Council are looking to transfer the management of open space to local communities. Such a transfer would reduce both day to day and long term costs and enable the Council to achieve savings”.
The Council report – rightly – does criticise some local Councillors for not providing “leadership”.
In truth many – particularly on the Labour side – do not live in the wards that they represent and rarely even visit the people that they are supposed to represent. They don’t produce newsletters, don’t survey public service quality standards and only follow up issues when there is an election in the offing. They are the people who are least likely to drive community action.
It is also fanciful to suggest that all communities have the capacity to take on public service management .
While the devolution of powers to local communities is welcome