At tonight’s City of York Council, the York Conservative Group will oppose the ruling Labour Group’s budget and Conservatives have also submitted an amendment, which if passed would put funds back into the frontline services that residents want.
The Conservative Group amendment includes the following:
- A complete reversal of Labour’s plans to levy an additional charge for residents’ first green bins
- Stopping the proposed £600,000 cut to Explore (who run the city’s libraries)
- A double boost to road repairs with an extra £200,000 spend per annum and a commitment to buy a new ‘all in one’ pothole repair machine that identifies and fixes potholes in one go
- Cutting the cost of politics – reducing so called ‘Special Responsibility allowances’ (which currently include a Labour councillor getting an additional £10,806 for chairing one committee and a Lib Dem getting £8,461 to chair another!) and removing ‘Political Assistants’, costing nearly £100,000 to the taxpayer per year to work for the Lib Dem and Labour councillors.
- Delivery of a management structure truly fit for the current size of the council and the services it needs to deliver.
- Stopping the Lib Dem proposed and Labour ratified plan to removal council support for bus travel of residents wishing to send their children to Tadcaster Grammar School.
- A new fund for a ‘Tool library’ which would provide gardening equipment for residents who want to improve their areas above and beyond the current council maintenance levels, which we would increase over time.
- Allocating nearly £1 million of funding from the government purely to boost reverses, such is our concern about the lack of deliverability of many of Labour’s proposals.
- Limited the proposed rise in Council Tax by 0.5%. Conservatives remain the only York party believing Council Tax to be too high and seeking to address it.
Conservative Group Leader Cllr Chris Steward said
The budget amendment process is always something of a farce given we can only incorporate changes that relate to the next financial year rather than the longer term planning that the council needs. Our amendment though shows our priorities – we are moving funds back to the front line with no additional green bin charge, protecting our libraries and a surge in road repairs. We are doing this by cutting council inefficiencies, a vast management structure that has grown rather than shrunk as the council’s employee numbers have got smaller and reducing the cost of politics.
Deputy Group Leader Cllr Martin Rowley said
We were particularly keen to reverse Labour’s plan to charge all residents for their green bins. We accept the additional charge for residents who have two green bins but believe it would be wrong to have an additional charge for the first as well, this is exactly the sort of service that Council Tax is paid for. If Labour’s charge came in we would certainly see lots of green waste go in gray bins and there would be a risk of more fly tipping.
