Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Council tax Bill
Have you seen your Council Tax Bill?
Council Tax Bills have been landing on doormats with a heavy thump over the past couple of days, and along with the bill is a lovely (and probably expensive) high quality glossy brochure outlining how wonderful our Council is, and an explanation of where our money is going to next year. To the layman it must appear to be very confusing, I wonder how many people have a clear grasp of it at all, I'm sure that I don't.
Some things intrigue me and leave me asking questions;
* It looks as though total net expenditure for the Executive Directorates (the departments which provide the bulk of our services) is 207.2 million pounds, but because we are using up 3.2 million pounds of reserves to help cover last term's overspend, the total expenditure is only 204 million pounds. Surely the reserves should be added rather than subtracted?
* Despite some protests over the small number of redundancies that the Council is looking for, the total number of full time equivalent staff is to grow from 6,369 to 6,454 with a resultant increase in wage costs of 42.9 million pounds. (I guess if there is a moratorium on recruitment this will provide a little "slack" for next year and allow the reserve fund to be replenished.)
* Despite the Council stating that they are unwilling to help out Nexus with additional funding towards free travel for pensioners, the annual grant to Nexus displays the biggest rise in ANY of the areas of our Council's budget, both in terms of money and percentage. Nexus will receive from us 88.1 million pounds next year, a rise of 19.4 million pounds - 28.24% higher than last year! There has been very little in the way of public disclosure over this massive increase and I think it would be worthwhile for one of our politicians or journalists to find out why this money is being expended, and to question why Nexus is playing politics with students and pensioners in their battle to get even more revenue to fund the free travel scheme for pensioners.
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Curly Born in 1956
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