Demonstrators against council service cuts and planned redundancies.
By Bill Heaney
If you always do what you always did then you will always get what you always got.
That’s why West Dunbartonshire will be faced with another year of austerity after the local council agreed last night (Wednesday) to a thumping 11.5 per cent increase in council tax to be imposed on its residents.
The short on ideas councillors – Labour and SNP – said the tax increase was imposed to fill a £7.7 million budget gap, but there was no mention of the fact that gap was created on their watch.
Or that they gave a £6 million loan to one of the richest oil companies in the world to clear a polluted site for factories at the former Esso tank farm at Bowling.
The oil company made the mess and the cash-strapped council has been left to clear it up at the public’s expense.
Despite the fact that the meeting in the old Burgh Hall was supposed to be held in public, much of it was inaudible and some councillors sat with their backs to to the press and public.
The councillors were presented with a range of saving options which their highly paid officials told them would square the books, but the truth is that bitterly criticised cuts have been going on for the past decade in Dumbarton, which has been controlled both by Labour and SNP administrations.
Demonstrators, the large majority of them women, pictured demonstrating against council cuts in Church Street, Dumbarton, yesterday.
Top officials who were called out during the SNP regime for having expensive lunches at posh Cameron House Hotel and fine dining restaurants in Glasgow as well as playing golf on manicured greens on Loch Lomondside with contractors.
The police were called in but investigative journalists were told curtly by the then council chief executive Joyce White there was “nothing to see here”.
The chief officials left their employment with the council a short time afterwards with so-called “golden parachutes” – redundancy and retirement packages paid from the public purse.
This latest round of increases in council tax comes after the nationwide freeze, introduced by the SNP, came to an end.
On Wednesday afternoon the Labour administration proposed an 11.5% of which 6.16% will be used to support the health and social care partnership, West Dunbartonshire Leisure Trust as well as Argyll and Bute Integrated Joint Board.
The other 5.34% will support council wide services, but they are a shadow of what they were just a few years ago.
During the meeting the SNP proposed an 8.5% council tax increase instead and said using £2m worth of reserves meaning no savings options would need to be taken.
Councillor Jim Bollan, of the West Dunbartonshire community party, had proposed a 10% hike. He has earlier called for a one year tax freeze.
West Dunbartonshire’s heavily criticised council leader Martin Rooney said: “I would like to thank all the managers of staff in the 2025/26 budget.
“After years of trying to find some financial sustainability for our council and the people it serves, we are still struggling to significantly reduce the significant revenue deficit.
“It seems that every time we take one step forward, we end up taking two steps back. The continuing financial instability and the ongoing need to make savings means it has become impossible to identify options to balance the budget while continuing to provide services in the same way.
“I have made repeated calls for fairer funding for West Dunbartonshire and my Labour colleagues at all levels have echoed those pleas. We ask for fairness but instead we have had systematic and sustained cuts to revenue funding since 2007 and the pressure this council is facing is a direct result of that.
“So what choice do we have when we are asked to do more with less. The answer is no choice. This continued lack of funding has put us in an impossible position.
“These are not the choices anyone in this room wants to make but the bottom line is this, we must balance our budgets to work towards a sustainable future for West Dunbartonshire.”
Community Party councillor Jim Bollan, the SNP’s Cllr Ian Dickson and Cllr Martin Rooney, leader of the Labour administration.
Speaking on their proposal to raise council tax by 8.5% the SNP group said this would be below the average in Scotland as of March 5, 2025.
This is a vital service when VAWG is on the rise and they are cutting funding ! Shameful WDC
SNP Councillor Ian Dickson said: “The people of Scotland are persistently paying the price of West Minster decisions that hurt our public services, economy and society.
“We have a moral obligation to do everything we can to protect public services and make things easier in the face of the ongoing cost of living crisis.
“This proposal includes no cuts to services and no compulsory redundancies. The budget rejects the savings options and protects funding for several organisations.”
No councillor volunteered to take any reduction in their own salary – these range from £25,000 to £50,000 plus expenses – despite the fact that some of them have second jobs.
However, the word on the street now is that there will be redundancies and service cuts in the near future despite the cost of living crisis which has seen some council workers having to work in two jobs to pay bills and avoid poverty.
Morale at every level in the council is at an all-time low and there are regular allegations of bullying of staff, one of which is said to have cost the council hundreds of thousands of pounds after an employment tribunal judge found they had illegally sacked a disabled employee.
WDC and Martin Rooney/Councillors need to stop blaming Westminster and everyone else. Stop wasting money on vanity projects etc like the Alexandria Fountain. Lack of Roads/pathway gritting is already a disgrace, pavements/dropped pavements/potholes are a danger to life and limb. Just because WDC say that residents say they are in favour of a certain project, does’t mean it is true. Where is the proof/oversight of these opinions? WDC seem obsessed by doing work for ‘visitors’ to the area, but why don’t they improve facilities for the residents?