Tonight at 6:30pm the council will sit down to discuss the proposed budget for 2013/14. This will not be a nice experience, as although I think we (the Conservative Administration) are proposing the best value for money and “least worst” savings we can find, there are a lot of cutbacks that I’d rather not make, but we have a responsibility to make our budget balance. It is not acceptable, in my view, to set a budget that spends our reserves for ongoing expenditure. The reserves are only there once, the expenditure is there every year!
The proposal is to ask for residents to pay a little more – 1.75% rise on council tax and the rest of the savings to come from corporate/whole council level savings (such as rationalising contracts, asking suppliers to help out etc) and from individual departments. In total we need to save about £10.5m to balance the books.
Once we have set the budget for the year we have a pretty full agenda of other items for the council to debate and consider as well.
Anyway before tonight I have to do the “day job” I have several meetings regarding looking after our children in the town – Safeguarding them, fostering and youth projects!
I get to go to my “full-time” job tomorrow for only the second time this week!