Council budgets: Lord provost backs administration's plans for £3.5m of cuts in Dundee
Dundee City Council decided to make savings of more than £3.5m as it froze council tax for the sixth year in a row.
- By Grant Smith
- Published in the Courier : 10.02.12
- Published online : 10.02.12 @ 02.56pm
The SNP administration claimed it had delivered a budget that protected frontline services and maintained its commitment to avoiding compulsory redundancies.
Opposition parties argued that cuts to specialist music and PE teachers should have been reversed.
The Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat groups all proposed their own alternative revenue budgets — but even on occasions when they supported each other they could not muster enough votes to overturn the majority commanded by the SNP with the support of Lord Provost John Letford.
The council will now have £357m for its day-to-day spending throughout 2012/13, with another £58m available for capital projects.
The average Band D council tax will remain at £1,211.
Willie Sawers, administration finance spokesman, introduced the SNP budget proposal saying: ''We have made every effort to protect frontline services. That is why we have increased spending in social work by £4.4m to help adults, older and younger people in our community.
''In these difficult economic times we have frozen charges for children's school meals and meals provided by the social work department, thus relieving the financial burden on hard pressed people.''
Mr Sawers said the administration was ''doing everything it can to help deliver for people across the city'' and he highlighted the efforts to create an offshore renewable energy industry and the V&A at Dundee project as examples of the work being done to attract new investment.
He also stressed that exam results in city schools were improving and that Dundee had the best pupil/teacher ratio of any mainland council in Scotland.
Education proved to the main battleground during the budget debate.
Labour group leader Kevin Keenan said that allowing more than 90 teachers to leave last year had been ''a cut too far'' and the proposal to get rid of the music and PE teachers from primary schools should be dropped.
He wondered if the council had received special dispensation from the Scottish Government to remove the specialist posts, as one of the conditions of the national agreement to freeze council tax had been to maintain teacher numbers.
He was backed by Laurie Bidwell, the group's education spokesman, who noted that the new national curriculum included health and wellbeing and arts.
He said these would be ''empty promises'' if the resources were not there to support them.
But SNP administration leader Ken Guild said he had not received a single email from a parent or teacher on the topic and his colleague Stewart Hunter said he had recently spoken to a head teacher who told him his school would be still capable of delivering the courses.
Conservative group leader Rod Wallace also attacked the loss of the specialist teachers, noting that the PE teachers in particular would go at a time when the London Olympics were approaching and the Commonwealth Games were due to be held in Scotland in two years.
Fraser Macpherson, Liberal Democrat group leader, read from an SNP election manifesto, promising to direct more resources to PE in schools.
His party was also the only one to propose cutting council tax, suggesting a £3 reduction at Band D was feasible.
The opposition's efforts were in vain, however, as the administration easily won the resulting votes as each party's proposals were dealt with.
The meeting of the policy and resources committee to fix the capital and revenue budgets took a little under two hours — considerably faster than normal and about half the length of last year's deliberations.
Afterwards, Mr Sawers said this was down to the ''lack of substance'' in the opposition proposals and he pronounced himself ''very satisfied'' the financial package delivered by the administration.
Cutback ideas rejected as inhospitable
Councillors argued about alcohol, cars and conferences on Thursday's budget day.
The SNP administration found itself having to fend off opposition attempts to cut spending from various parts of the revenue budget in failed attempts to find enough spare cash to keep on specialist music and PE teachers.
The list included a proposal to get rid one of the pair of civic cars, freeing up £10,000, with Labour councillor Laurie Bidwell suggesting that one vehicle should be enough.
All the opposition parties also wanted to save another £5,537 by deleting the budget for alcohol purchases.
Conservative member Donald Hay said the Scottish Government was trying to encourage people to drink less and the council should not provide free alcohol at the taxpayers' expense.
The Conservatives have often opposed spending on sending councillors to conferences and this time the Labour and Liberal Democrat groups agreed, but their efforts to shave another £2,000 off the budget this way failed.
Administration leader Ken Guild noted that efforts to attract conferences to venues such as Caird Hall could be hampered if the council earned a reputation for not sending its elected members to events.
He also attacked as ''a piece of populism'' a proposal to get rid of departmental hospitality budgets totalling almost £26,000, saying the council was seeking to attract inward investment and it would be wrong to adopt a ''Scrooge-like attitude'' towards visitors, or to stop councillors having a cup of tea or coffee.
04.12pm - 10.02.2012 NE Strathtay - Dundee, Scotland Report This
Being now an Ex-Labour voter, I think what is proposed by the SNP administration for Dundee is great. Great to see people in post who actually care for the City and are not dictated too by London HQ's. Anyway an empty gesture by the Lib of a £3 cut (not even a penny a day).
07.50pm - 10.02.2012 Ron - Dundee, Scotland Report This
This article is littered with missed opportunities by the SNP, the PE one exposed by the Lib Dem councillor, a prime example.
07.54pm - 10.02.2012 W.P. - Fife, Scotland Report This
@ NE. A sad commentary. Kudos to Cllr MacPherson for looking at ways of making sure the SNP met its manifesto commitments, even if they reverted to type and broke yet another promise.
10.32am - 11.02.2012 Kenny - Forfar, Scotland Report This
The world of Politics is littered with broken promises across the years and across ALL the parties. Look at the antics of the Labour and Tory parties over the past few years. Vote them out at the next election move on to the next bunch of promise breakers. You can't please all of the people.........
10.57am - 11.02.2012 P.r. - Dundee, UK Report This
Echo 2 and 3 thoughts above. Us Dundonians will sleep safer in our bed knowing that LP Letfrd can be trusted to do the right thing.
11.54am - 11.02.2012 E.A.M. - dundee, angus Report This
This council still seems to have the Man Mind Thyself attitiude.As long as they can have perks like 2 civic cars, Hospitality,and collecting a fee for this, whilst our children who are told they are getting lazy have the P.E. teachers removed and the class teacher having more work piled on them.
09.35pm - 11.02.2012 Wully - Dundee, Scotland Report This
The SNP administration in Dundee cuts PE teachers whilst its bosses at Holyrood claim credit for saying the complete opposite? How can P&K do it but not Dundee?
01.49pm - 12.02.2012 RJ - Dundee, Scotland Report This
Sacrificing specialist music and PE teachers for Dundee's children so SNP councillors can keep their publicly funded alcohol and two (yes two!) civic cars?! I'm becoming increasingly disillusioned with the SNP - if they keep this up I won't be voting for them again!
11.16pm - 12.02.2012 P.A. - St Andrews, UK Report This
SNP pledge - We will give young Scots a fair chance to realise their potential with a £50 million youth talent initiative, called the Young Scots Fund, focused on sport, enterprise and creativity. All very well - but what about what happens *IN* school?
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