Budget Blues - a blog post from Tess Green

Another council budget day faced and passed. No-one on the council welcomes this annual bed of nails on which we all lose out and I was glad to see it over.

Eric Pickles at the annual local government conference told us that as local councils we were good at dealing with cuts and so he was going to dish out more – never mind that we have to deal with the effects of government welfare cuts, increases in the number of school- aged children and more and more vulnerable elderly people.

There were some very tiny bright spots here– more people than ever taking part in the budget consultation, some services threatened and then saved, such as the public toilets, but the end result is that Bristol City council will again lose hundreds of staff, adding to the dole queue, and the remaining staff will find it difficult and stressful to meet the needs of Bristolians. £83 million is a lot to lose from a budget of £325 million.

This year the budget meeting was a quiet affair – no members of the public shouting from the gallery or having to be forcefully removed, no loud impassioned speeches against the government from councillors and very few amendments to the mayor’s proposals.
The Lib/Dem group seemed fixated on avoiding a council tax increase despite the public indicating in the consultation that a majority would accept a small rise in order to protect services.

Conservatives kept quiet except for a small amendment on the capital budget to renovate rail stations.

The Labour group used their larger muscle to slightly increase some areas of funding such as sports development, pest control and children’s services.

The Greens made no amendments as they felt that there was no room for any meaningful change to the negative effects of the overall budget. We had tried to bring an amendment to cancel the bus rapid transit and South Bristol link roads, which could have saved this utter waste of money. But this was ruled out of order due to our not being able to cost the effects of neighbouring councils suing the city for damages. After all, the benefits of the schemes would be mainly residents of Bath and NE Somerset and N. Somerset despite Bristol picking up the largest bill!

We had also prepared a strong case against a Labour amendment from Sean Beynon, which would have taken £100,000 from key arts providers in order to boost community safety, but fortunately common sense prevailed and the amendment was withdrawn.

Most people recognise that communities are strengthened by arts activities – the Arts Trail, local theatres, Lantern Parade, Upfest and many music events in our area all keep us in touch with one another and help to make this area safer, and most need minimal funding. Large arts venues like the Old Vic bring visitors and should attract expertise that assists the smaller local events.

As the song goes “yes it is bread we fight for but we fight for roses too”, so let’s keep the small amount of funding available for arts.

The Greens believe that the government austerity plan is ill founded and will not take us in the right direction. Daniella, as our leader articulated that we need more local authority and other public services, more jobs in renewable energy, recycling and energy conservation industries to reduce our carbon emissions, more sustainable and public transport and more attention spent on avoiding the worst effects of climate change such as flooding.

This could be financed by a financial transaction tax (Robin Hood), by ceasing to fund Trident and other unuseable nuclear weapons and by collecting the millions of unpaid tax which big firms manage to avoid. The ordinary people do not need yet more punishment for the mistakes of the bankers. Instead they need adequately funded and high quality public services.
Tess Green