I think the council were meeting today to decide on the level of council tax for this year. I don't know what happened. I don't even know what the Labour group intended to do about the Tory proposal to increase the borough part of the tax by 2%
My guess – and I realise its a bit brave to make a guess about something which has already happened so I could be wrong already – is that the 2% will be approved. For it to be voted down the Labour and Lib-Dem leaders would have had to reach an agreement about an alternative and then that alternative would have had to get agreed (unchanged) by the Labour group meeting on Monday night, and then everyone would have to turn up and vote. With so many stages for it to fail, I can't see any challenge having succeeded.
This 2% is a funny thing though. Only a month ago we were told that the council faced financial meltdown and apocalypse if it didn't flog off council houses because of some £12 million gap, and yet the Tory council now says that it doesn't even need to increase its tax revenue by as much as inflation. That doesn't add up.
Obviously it is important to them to make a political point by setting a below-inflation rise, but I do wonder why they bother. A whole load of taxpayers don't scrutinse the leaflets that come with their annual bill: they just notice the bottom line. And the bottom line is that we will be paying 4.6% more this year, and that the borough council will get the blame since it is the body which, although it only keeps about 13% of what is collected, has its name and logo on the bills.
The political gesture is an empty one as most taxpayers will just associate Crawley Borough Council with the £57.51 annual rise (for a band D home) and not the £3.51 rise in the borough portion.
Anyone who doesn't believe that just has to look at page 31 of this week's Crawley Observer: big headline "Council tax up", sub-headline "Rise set to hit 4.6 per cent", and underneath all that a giant photo of Bob Lanzer, leader of the borough council, grinning. Those who only skim through the paper will just connect Bob Lanzer, the Tories, and 4.6%
Come the May elections they will put out leaflets saying how they kept the tax rise below inflation and voters will have recently got bills with a 4.6% increase and assume they are pulling a fast one. It happened to us every year when I was a councillor: we would agonise over the level of our tax, but we could have set a rise of zero and still suffered the blame by association for the county rise. So the way the Observer portrayed it should come as no great surprise.
Its bad enough to put services at risk for a political gesture but to put services at risk for a futile political gesture is, well, futile.
So tonight the council may have been arguing about figures which would have changed tax by one or two pounds, but it all gets obscured by the £49.07 rise of the county council. (Band D again) Again that is no surprise for anyone. At least this year it is one bunch of Tories getting the blame for another bunch of Tories' tax rise instead of Labour getting the blame for it.
(And isn't it funny how the county rise is always high – except for every fourth year when they are up for re-election. Its almost as if they know they are Teflon-coated and the boroughs will take the fall)
This can get confusing for anyone who doesn't like maths, but the borough will only be responsible for 5.9% of this year's tax rise, the police will be responsible for 11.6% of the increase, and the county for 82.5% of it – but its the borough's name on the bills.
In a way this 2% is a real gift to the Labour party. The Tories will derive little PR benefit from it, but every time there is any cut in any service they are open to teh accusation that they considered that saving two or three pounds on a total tax bill of over £1350 was more important than whichever service is at risk.
I was going to continue with why I think I don't pay too much tax, despite using few services, and then a few comments on government funding and the redistribution of wealth, but I just realised how late it is. Maybe tomorrow…
Crawley Borough Council did decide on a 2% increase. Labour put forward an amendment that would have increased it to 3.5%.
The amendment was table about 2 nano-seconds before the start of the meeting and the Mayor had to adjourn the meeting for 15 minutes at one point ‘cos nobody had had time to read it – and what was also painfully obvious was that this included more than a couple of Labour Councillors. There was also a rumour going round that the Labour group leader hadn’t read it either. Maybe somebody could clarify that?
The amendment was rejected by the Council but, as I said at the meeting, if it had been submitted as part of the budget making process or that there had been a bit more notification of it, then there may have been a good chance of it getting support from members other than those in the Labour group.
It was certainly a political decision by the Conservatives to make the increase just 2% – nothing wrong with that as it stands – but too many hypocritical arguments were used over the amount being decided by what the Council required rather than admitting it was a pure political percentage.
Sadly Labour’s amendment, even if not meant that way, came across as an amendment for the sake of an amendment.
Ah1 Sounds like I’ve finally found the one place in the world that is as politically incompetent as Walsall.
Don’t make you happy but at least makes you feel less alone.