Budget Day Exasperation

I am sitting at my computer finally having calmed down after today’s budget setting council. My incandescent rage that has slowly extinguished throughout the evening was sparked by the absolutely diabolical proceedings in the chamber this afternoon. To be honest my anger with the performance of many of my colleagues from the other council groups is unlikely to go away for a good while.

Today was always going to be an incredibly important meeting. The 2010/11 budget has been set not only economically difficult times, it comes at the end of a year of financial turmoil for Stoke-on-Trent City Council. The Tory/LibDem/Indy’s budget proposals fell way short of the mark in terms of offering answers to the city’s needs. In fact the proposals contained no investment in any area of the council at all. The only thing put on the table when the budget setting process started was cuts, cuts and more cuts.

In yet the Tories and their patsies around the chamber, including the BNP claimed it was the most inclusive budget setting process ever. Rubbish. Labour’s budget consultation two years ago included a communication with every household in the city requesting participation. No, this year’s ‘consultation’ documents and events were merely an attempt to massage the egos of the more gullible in the council chamber. How is being asked to pick between this cut or that cut a genuine consultation? It’s like being asked to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea. Nor did the exercise ask members to identify priority areas to improve service or if they had alternatives for savings.

So that is exactly what we on the Labour Group did do in our amendment proposals. Keeping the figures balanced we laid out in a positive way priority areas we believe the council should invest in and improve – in tune with people in our communities. Further, we identified where the money for our investments were coming from. Our proposals included:
· Maintaining the Stoke-Speaks-Out Budget in order to preserve a gold standard service for many children in the city
· Investing an extra £100k in improving Dementia services
· Investing an extra £500k to tackle antisocial behaviour
· Using £1 million from the unnecessarily large dedicated reserve for insurance to fund 100 new apprenticeships across the City Council. Using taxpayers money to create jobs and valuable training experiences for local young people
· Saving £400k from the £7.7 million per year spent on outside consultants
· Saving £150k from the corporate communications budget by creating a more efficient and joined up operation
· Saving £150k from the management costs in NSRP, a service which has underperformed despite generous funding.

Despite the fact that several councillors from the other parties conceded that we had good ideas they shouted us down for ‘political grandstanding’- we should have brought up our proposals outside the chamber according to them. I query whether there is any point in having a budget council if it is just to nod through the executive’s proposals with no alternatives or proper debate.

Nobody on the other benches actually gave a passing mention during the amendment ‘debate’ to the actual content of our proposals. They chortled away when we talked about saving Stoke-speaks-out, chatted amongst them selves when we argued for investment to tackle the ASB that makes people’s lives a misery, they jeered when we put forward plans to employee young people and were belligerent when we said how we would pay for it all. I can only put this despicable behaviour down to the fact it was a Labour putting forward these ideas.

I put it to Messrs Clarke, Ward, and Irving, not forgetting Messrs Salih, Coleman and Ibbs, that it was they and not us who were playing petit politics on budget day. It was them voting against an amendment because of who proposed it over and above any ideological or practical consideration. Because of them and their cronies the city will be a poorer place as long as the 2010/11 budget is in place.

There was only one non-labour Councillor I retained full respect for today and that was Gavin Webb. We never agree, he is a libertarian and I am a socialist. But he had the decency to give libertarian arguments for his position today and for that full respect.

Apologies for this stream of consciousness, I’m just very angry. I promised @bankyfields a blog on regeneration soon - I will get round to it in the near future.