In any council, the budget is the time of year when things happen for real. Unlike many meetings in which the Cabinet system has taken over the powers that Councillors think should be reserved to them, it is when decisions are made on how well services are funded, how much tax is levied, and so on.
Last night, as the local press is stating, the Conservative position of claiming a 'council tax freeze' was undermined as they were out of the Council chamber when Labour forced a vote on the budget resolution, effectively giving Labour a majority to get their budget through; then they abstained rather than vote against the 2.2% Council Tax increase they had earlier voted down.
The great irony, as their leader Cllr Cumpsty acknowledged, was that the Conservatives had started to discuss with us (the Liberal Democrats) proposals to achieve a nil Council Tax increase without impacting on frontline services. (It was clear that they had no such proposals worked up at the start of the meeting)
The simple fact is that an adjournment (the fourth?) was been called until 10.40pm; knowing this, we were in the Council chamber on time, but they were not. Labour moved to a vote on the budget with a notional £1 difference from their original and as soon as I could, I stood up and asked for a recorded, named vote, but this was turned down by the Mayor. The vote was carried 19 (Lab) for and 8 (Lib Dem) against.
But it gets stranger - Council Tax levels are set by a separate resolution by law, and by this time the Tories had re-entered the Council Chamber, and this was voted against. There was then a further delay, and an attempt to see whether the adopted Labour budget could be reviewed (which would have without doubt stretched the budget debate into a second day), but instead Cllr Cumpsty declared on the fifth resumption of the debate that his group would abstain and let the 2.2% Council Tax increase through - to my great surprise.
It would have taken some £1.46m of savings to achieve a nil increase. I referred in my speech to £1.5m of potential savings which could have achieved this - all on non-essential items, just like the budgets (Marketing & PR, consultancies, agency staff) where we were able to find savings in our adopted budget last year.
Put simply, it could have been done - had the Conservatives merely been where they should, when they should.
