Canterbury City Council Budget Meeting – A statement by LD Leader Cllr Alex Perkins (Canterbury & Whitstable Liberal Democrats)

Canterbury & Whitstable Liberal Democrats <info@cantlibdem.org.uk>

Canterbury City Council Budget Meeting – A statement by LD Leader Cllr Alex Perkins

March 3, 2011 4:57 PM

Local residents deserve decent services. We wanted to keep as many of these services as possible - particularly those that people who responded to the council's budget consultation said they most wanted to keep. We don't understand why at the council meeting the Conservatives were cutting things residents wanted to save - and kept things they had said could be cut. What was the point of consulting people and then ignoring them? The Conservatives voted against residents' top two choices from the budget consultation and just did what they wanted anyway.

Lib Dems proposed that ALL councillors take a cut in their allowances to save the services that are important to local people. But the Conservative councillors said no. They voted to hang on to their allowances (they paid themselves over a quarter of a million last year alone) and cut things like funding for voluntary organisations, money to provide loos for the public, recycling sacks and the Out of Hours Nuisance Service.

The proposals we put forward would not have cost council tax payers a penny more. They would keep Council Tax at current levels and most importantly they would reflect the views of local people. We also proposed scrapping the £40,000 they are paying toward the Open Golf in Sandwich. The Conservative councillors just wouldn't listen!