By Bill Heaney
Cuts to public services which the Labour administration say are “unavoidable” will have a lasting impact on West Dunbartonshire communities, Councillor Martin Rooney, the Council Leader said last night.
Members gathered for the ticket-only meeting in the Council Offices in Church Street, where the public gallery was full to overflowing, to discuss how to plug the remaining £8.3million budget gap, after agreeing early savings of £2.3 million late last year.
Swingeing cuts agreed at the meeting included a £60 charge introduced for the collection of garden waste; a reduction in funding available through community budgeting; and the removal of £14,000 grant funding to the Loch Lomond Highland Games event.
Unfortunately, for the people in the public gallery, the debates might as well have been conducted in Gaelic or Greek since it was well night impossible to hear or understand what was happening despite the frequent calls from the Scottish Government for open-ness and transparency.
The SNP group sat with their backs to the public and were impossible to identify. They also blocked the lights on the microphones which indicated who was speaking and the public had to deal with disembodied voices; some Labour members discourteously left the chamber while trade union officials, council staff, councillors and were making important contributions and two women on the Labour benches drank coke from bottles and sucked on sweets giving the impression that they were at a picnic rather than a public meeting.
In addition, to the cuts listed above, school crossing patrollers – lollipop men and women – will be reduced “in line with national guidance”, breakfast clubs will be replaced with early start clubs chargeable for any pupil not entitled to a free school meal, and a saving will be made by replacing six underutilised grass pitches with three new 4G (plastic) pitches.
Other savings include a change to a four-day opening for Clydebank Town Hall, where the museum, created at a high cost, is barely used, and there will be revisions to the way potholes in the roads across the county are treated to ensure repairs last longer.
As part of the budget meeting, members also agreed to freeze Council Tax for residents.
During the meeting, Council Leader, Councillor Rooney made it clear the savings had to be made in order to continue delivering services residents relied on most.
Acknowledging the impact of agreed cuts, he pledged to use existing funding set aside for Cost of Living initiatives to improve the lives of the most vulnerable people in the area.
This will take the form of four new funds which direct support for the benefit of West Dunbartonshire.
The Youth Success Fund will provide grants to assist local charities and not-for-profit organisations to deliver initiatives developed with and for young people aged up to 18. The £100,000 Fund will provide one off grants to support projects, activities and services in our area which build the confidence, capacity, skills and resilience of your young people.
The £250,000 Community Success Fund will support community organisations impacted by the savings which the Council says is having to make and give them time to develop plans, business cases, lease or asset transfer requests and seek alternative funding to ensure their long term future.
The £250,000 Community Sports Success Capital Fund will provide capital grants to sports groups and organisations interested in pursuing community ownership to enhance sporting facilities in the area and “support and increase opportunities for communities to be physically active”.
In addition, a General Capital Community Success Fund of £150,000 will be open to community groups who wish to undertake capital works – projects such as new buildings, urgent repairs and renovations – which require stand alone sums that cannot be met by the above funding streams.
The Council also committed to providing £500,000 of matched capital funding to the proposed Community Sports Facility at Millburn; £75,000 of matched capital funding to Holm Park (Yoker) Community Football Academy Accessibility Project; £12,000 from Cost of Living revenue funding to Lomond Food Pantry over the next four years to supplement food donations; and a further £12,000 from Cost of Living revenue funding to support the activities of Time for Tully over the next four years.
Old Kilpatrick Food Parcels in the ward represented by Provost Douglas McAllister, Labour’s prospective candidate in the upcoming General Election, have also been generously awarded £32,000 from the Cost of Living Capital fund for building improvements at Napier Hall, which include the supply and fit utilities gas, electricity and plumbing to be completed in advance of the planned major extension project.
Napier Hall appears to be expanding rapidly from just a food bank into other projects such as a village cafe.
Labour leader Martin Rooney, Provost Douglas McAllister and Councillor Michelle McGinty.
Councillor Rooney said: “This has truly been the most difficult budget of my career to date. None of us took on the role of councillor to make decisions like these but unfortunately – as a result of rapidly reducing funding from the Scottish Government alongside increased costs – we have been left with absolutely no choice.
“The savings options agreed today were not taken lightly, but after careful deliberation, these were the best available options, allowing us to protect vital Council services and jobs.
“We recognise any cuts to services will have a lasting impact on our communities and that is why for the past year I have called upon the Scottish Government to give us fairer funding. Instead, we have received a real-terms cut to core funding.
“For us, considering the struggles we know so many of our residents face, freezing Council tax was the only responsible decision.
“Our priority and focus remains on providing additional support for residents hardest hit by the rising cost of living, and by utilising existing funding, we will be able to direct assistance towards our most vulnerable.”
Depute Council Leader, Councillor Michelle McGinty, who is also Chair of the Council’s cross-party Cost of Living working group, said: “Under funding has put us in the extremely difficult position of having to choose which cuts are more palatable, when in reality we know each and every one will have an impact.
“It’s natural that the focus of these budget decisions will be on what has been cut, but this budget has also saved a number of services and facilities.
“In addition, our new funds, introduced utilising Cost of Living funding, will help us build a sustainable future for our area, and demonstrates our continued focus on making practical support and assistance available to those who need it most.”
When the Budget business had concluded, Cllr Jim Bollan, of the Community Party, said it would have been helpful if a document containing the Labour leader’s take on it had been distributed before the meeting.
This, he felt, would have been helpful to those involved since it contained all the decisions that had just been made and would have saved a group of elderly people from four Vale of Leven Veterans’ Bowling Clubs, which had been threatened with cuts which they say would have led to closures, from having to sit through two hours of tedious discussion.
Asked what he thought of the council meeting, one bowling club member used a single word to sum up his feelings as he left the gallery – “terrible”.
So far as we know, the police who were called in specially to supervise the demonstration outside the old Burgh Hall – they were in vehicles at both the front and back door – were not required, but it was at least six hours of valuable police time wasted.
Top picture: Labour members who agreed to freeze the Council Tax pictured in the Council chamber. Picture by Bill Heaney
Too much to expect WD Councillors would stand up for residents in the face of SNP threats ?
And brown bins are not only for garden waste.