The Lib Dems put forward their final proposal of 3.5%. We put forward a lower rise that also had some interesting features:
- Ending Lib Dem means testing for care services for the elderly and disabled
- Moving from fortnightly door step collection of recycling to weekly (Can you believe that under the Lib Dem administration recycling rates have actually fallen?)
- Very specific and targeted job reductions (actually half of the jobs were vacant anyway and all of the jobs were back room posts) to start to wind back the army of staff in Kingston – 40% rise since 2000 and 500 in the last year alone.
Sadly they refused to accept our lower tax budget and even voted against weekly colections of recycling materials. I sometimes wonder if things could be done a lot better. Take the tribalism away and our objectives are pretty much the same; doing the best for the people of Kingston. The combined knowledge of both parties could be put to better use in bringing in a budget together. Still, I offered this at a Council meeting in January and they never came back to ask me!
2 comments:
'I sometimes wonder if things could be done a lot better. Take the tribalism away and our objectives are pretty much the same; doing the best for the people of Kingston.'
If the objectives of the Lib Dems and the Conservatives are the same (which I doubt is the case) then what is the point in voting for a change in administration?
Because it may be that the objectives are the same but we have very different weays of achieving them.
The Lib Dems have failed to achieve anything in their four years except hike up tax by employing more staff, spend money on useless schemes such as a fountain (£100k), punished the elderly because they saved and have a recycling rate that is falling so fast that the largest increase in spending in their budget this year has been landfill tax!
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