The Way the Money Goes (From Clacton and Frinton Gazette)

The Way the Money Goes

12:13pm Tuesday 10th March 2009

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THE sensibly collated ‘Inform’ guide, which together with council tax bills, hit the doormats last week, tells an interesting story. Like all good stories, a mixture of fact, fable, hype and hope. Notable as much for significant omissions as for inclusions.

But to keep it simple, the County Council, by limiting the increase to a welcome all time low of 1.9 per cent appears to have taken on board concerns over the way a monolithic structure impacts our pockets. Planned outsourcing of part of ECC functions will, hopefully, not be hindered by union intransigence but the taxpayer does need to know more.

Frinton and Walton, where small is beautiful and local is good, is that rarity. A council that listens and makes an effort to reflect the mood of the electorate. The bottom line being tax down by almost 12 per cent.

On the other hand, TDC, where tax is up 4 per cent at a time when heads elsewhere are rolling, wages and salaries reduced or frozen, awards its own ever increasing but undisclosed staff numbers a 2.75 per cent plus pay rise. The Taxpayer Alliance calculates that 19 per cent of council tax, far from safeguarding front line services, goes straight into ‘gold plated’ town hall pensions. For Band D that’s £277 rising to £544 this year at Band H.

Reform, the highly rated think tank, concludes a county police force/service is an inefficient and expensive fiefdom run by a Chief Constable accountable only to a weak police authority. Essex Police upped their share of council tax by 4.93 per cent.

Contrary to exchanges between authorities, it’s good to read of one big happy family working together. We’ve had best value, we’ve had targets, both ridiculed. The present buzz word phrase, just as daft, is ‘efficiency savings’ where, as the late Jimmy Durante would recognise, everyone wants to get in on the act. No detail, reference points or quantifiable examples. History, however recent, repeating itself. Funny that.

For as the old nursery rhyme relates - that’s the way the money goes.

Ronald Coley.

Harold Road.

Frinton.

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