Budgets and Decisions

Setting the budget this time around has been extremely difficult. Why is that? Well for a number of years councillors were in the wonderful position of having more money to spend each year and were able to work with local people to work out how this could be spent. It might be a new cycle way, a new safety scheme for a piece of road or setting some priorities for the never ending repairs to our roads.

Now, it is very different. We are having to think about operating with less money year on year for the next 4 years. This is an unprecedented activity. What it means is that councillors will be making choices about what service is delivered, how it might be delivered more efficiently and what services will  be reduced or removed. These are difficult choices and require competent officers and competent councillors who are prepared to make the tough decisions. Every time a petition is handed in demanding a service is retained the question must always be “so what service are you prepared to lose to make up the shortfall and would that be fair”. We must always consider the needs of ALL the people of Cambridgeshire not just the noisey, well provided for Lib Dems  of Cambridge.

When the council is making cuts easy targets are presented to those who have a vested interest in trying to pointing out issues as if they are errors or faults. Our Lib Dem colleagues on the county council seem to have created an art form out of complaining. When ever they say more money should be spent on a service because it is unacceptable to make cuts, demand to know where that money is coming from. Do not accept a wishy washy answer about being more efficient as if they have invented the concept.

I am sure the council can continue to improve its efficiencies and I am in the vanguard of seeking them. BUT, since being elected I have seen no credible business sense from the Lib Dems. They excel at moaning and complaining but have little experience of actually doing anything, are unable to act in any joined up way amongst themselves let alone in the wider context and seem to allow high brow ideals to cloud practical thinking in this real world. The difference in views between the Lib Dems in Parliament, Cambridgeshire County Council and Cambridge City is marked. They seem to say what ever is necessary to attract votes which strikes me as opportunist and weak.

Budgets are about setting priorities and executing on them. I am proud that the conservative ruling party is doing just that.

 

Lib Dems Clueless when it comes to budgets

Interesting how often the noisy Lib Dems get things wrong. Back in february last year, one of the noiser Lib Dems, Nichola Harrison, demonstrated a complete lack of insight into the financial situation the council faced. She accused the sensible budget steps taken by the Conservatives as being daylight robbery. Without the increase in council  tax last year imagine how much worse the cuts would be now.  If you intend making lots of noise you need to be right. Would you trust your finances with that lot?

Cambridge Evening News 19/02/2009

Sheer robbery

From Cllr Nichola Harrison

DAYLIGHT robbery has been perpetrated by the Conservatives at the county council.

Taxpayers of Cambridgeshire be warned – you may as well get your wallets open because, however much it will hurt you, the Conservative county council has decided on one of the biggest council tax increases in the country – 3.9 per cent, way above inflation and way outside what was needed or justified.

If your home is in band D, you will be forcibly relieved of an extra £14 this year and £19 next year, and you will pay much more if you are in a higher band.

And do you know why? Because they claim the council’s need for savings is greater than yours.

Your bank account is to be raided into order to raise the council’s bank balances even higher. The council’s reserves have increased by a staggering 27 per cent this year – a comfort not, I suspect, available to many ordinary people whose capital wealth and income from savings have crashed during the same period.

The Conservatives will tell you they are doing the best thing for you, that there is no alternative, that you must take your medicine and trust them simply because they are the Conservatives and they know best. They will tell you that anyone with a different view is dangerous and reckless.

All that is nonsense. The council’s Liberal Democrat opposition put forward an affordable, deliverable, balanced, verified, budget proposal which would have kept the council tax increase down to 2.45 per cent and also delivered more police on the beat and £7 million to improve the shocking state of our roads, pavements and paths. It was voted down by the Conservatives in a breathtaking show of complacency and arrogance.

So beware – the Sheriff of Nottingham is alive and well and resident in the Conservative leader’s office at Cambridgeshire County Council. Anyone fancy a trip to the forest?

Liberal Democrat Councillor for

Petersfield

St Matthew’s Gardens

Cambridge

 

Lib Dems waste officers time at County Council

Google alerts are interesting. They pick up activity from individuals that would otherwise go unnoticed. I was alerted to a Freedom Of Information request made by Andy Pellow, a resident of Cambridge. He was asking some questions on the library service review. So what you might say.

Well, Andy Pellow is also known as County Councillor Pellow, a member of our Lib Dem opposition.

Clearly Councillor Pellow has every right to issue such a request but it seemed very odd to use the FOI route as he could very easily ask officers directly for such information. On top  of that on the 23^rd Sept the Safer and Stronger scrutiny committee looked at the library service review in some depth. Cllr Pellew’s party was well represented and gave robust scrutiny and were clearly engaging with the subject.

So I asked myself “what possible reason could there be for councilor Pellew to make an expensive FOI request and take up the valuable time of the Information Governance Office for no reason.“

Given Councillor Pellew would not, I am sure, deliberately want to waste money nor use the FOI publicity for political gain during these difficult times I was left thinking he must not know how to ask officers for information and that could only be because the induction training might not have covered this issue effectively.

I was able, at full council on the 19th Oct ask that the member training be reviewed to ensure that others don’t fall into such a wasteful trap again. I include the FOI request below for completeness:

Andy Pellew

 5 October 2010

Dear Cambridgeshire County Council,

 Following on from the Library Service Review update at the Cabinet
meeting on the 28th September (details available;
http://goo.gl/0L88 ).

Can you please provide the figures mentioned in Appendix A: LIBRARY
 ASSESSMENT METHODOLOGY: EXPLANATION, CRITERIA AND BANDINGS of the
 document attached to the Cabinet agenda (100928-6) for libraries 
across Cambridgeshire. 

I’m particularly interested in libraries in Cambridge City and the 
immediately surrounding area.

 Yours faithfully, 

Andy Pellew

 

Lib Dems still demand congestion charge ????

So, the transport innovation fund is dead. We have all spent a lot of time running around preparing bids for up to £500m to improve the transport infrastructure. And now it has been taken away by this bankrupt labour government. I resented being told we could only have the money we were rightly due, for our roads, if we accepted the congestion charge. I’m not sure if that was blackmail or bribery but which ever I don’t like it which is why I am proud to be one of only 7 county councillors to vote against the TIF application, which included congestion charges, last year.

Well, I am not sad. Because the congestion charge has also gone away I can’t help but smile (large grin actually). Yes we are still left with potential congestion, yes we still need to find money for a new station and yes this will involve lots more hard work, but ………. that is the same for all cities in England.

We have been saved from the blight of a congestion charge. We will remain competitive in the world market place. We will continue to be know for our technology, world class university and our flat landscape and not for being  “that city with a congestion charge”

How odd then that the Lib Dems continue to argue for a congestion charge. Only a party out of touch with the needs of business could possibly think that a congestion charge would benefit this county. Madness.

A fine, fine day.