Council leader Sam Crooks
Milton Keynes Council approved a two per cent increase in council tax last week. Reporter Jessica Cunniffe was at the meeting and takes a look at how the budget unfolded.
It was a bumpy ride for this year’s tax-increasing budget as backbenchers put potholes at the forefront of the debate.
This annual summit of sums always promises highflown rhetoric and low-brow humour.
As the three opposing parties started to bicker there was cause for despair (this was wrangle-weary Irene Henderson’s 27th budget) and cause for cheer (it was to be her last).
The biggest groan came when Mayor Euan Henderson announced Sam Crooks could exceed the four-minute speaking limit.
Opening withamotion setting out a rates increase of 1.5 per cent, the leader boasted ‘Milton Keynes will be £54 below the national average for council tax’.
Everyone soon eased into the familiarity of it all.
Equally unsurprising was Andrew Geary’s opposition to the proposals.
“This budget tragically once again misses a golden opportunity to take the bull by the horns and explore and drive ahead with a different approach,” he said.
But his budget-bemoaning group missed the opportunity to unveil this different approach in its failure to submit an amendment.
The berated budget now rested on Labour’s support, or abstention, to be passed.
To ensure this it included sweeteners like extending concessionary bus fares for teenagers following a socalled Lib-Lab pact.
Plans to cut library funding – just like Thatcher snatched the milk, Cllr Crooks was set to steal the books – were put paid to by Labour too.
Labour leader Cllr Norman Miles
Leader Norman Miles was quick to claim victory and laboured this point.
“Not everybody is eliterate.
There’s a joy in a book, there’s a joy in reading, there’s a joy in a well set out page...”, he said, as the golden opportunity to shush him slipped away.
“It’s not a bad job Sam; we can live with it,” was his summary of this that-will-do budget.
Then it was Douglas McCall’s turn to argue for a two per cent increase.
“Big holes are appearing before our eyes,” he said.
“We all knowwe’ve had one of the most severe winters for decades and we all know from our own eyes, and from residents, about potholes where there are literally hundreds appearing all over the city.
“This is an unusual event.
It needs unusual action,” he said of 2010’s pothole crisis.
This despite fewer than 12 months ago thousands of pounds being pumped into 2009’s pothole crisis.
There was Conservative consternation at the prospect of increasing tax to pay for this problem, rather than using reserves.
Conservative leader Cllr Andrew Geary
“This is either ignorance or a very devious way of increasing the base budget over a number of years,” said amilitant Andrew Geary, hoping to rival the poll tax riots with his very own pothole tax riots.
But the uprising was quelled by some customary hyperbole from Douglas McCall: “We’ve had the most severe winter for 30 years – we did have potholes before but nowwe have Grand Canyons opening up.”
These potholes were portrayed by the Tories as evidence of the ruling party’s failure, concave beacons of their poor road maintenance.
But they were more concerned with one almighty hole, a financial one, which Cllr Geary said left the city with ‘more cuts, more tax, and potentially a bigger hole appearing before our very eyes’.
David Tunney brightened everyone’s night with his dystopian vision of the city’s future, the labyrinth of Cllr Crooks’ finances, filled up with IOUs.
Brian White inadvertently conjured up a different image of the council – shoulder paddedwith giant mobile phones – as he urged them to ‘turn into a 21stcentury authority rather than a 1980s authority’.
The battered-but-intact budget was passed with its amendment, but not without one last pot-shot from Andy Dransfield: “If you had managed your finances properly then you would have had reserves capable of filling potholes.” However, when he branded ‘disloyal’ Douglas McCall’s backbenchers an ‘alternative cabinet’ he revealed the Lib Dems aremore prudent than previously claimed.
After all, Milton Keynes Council may not have enough reserves but it does have a reserve Cabinet.
Perhaps in case a pothole-related accident should befall the front bench.