OFFICERS and councillors of West Devon Borough Council state that by 'scrimping and saving to a tune of more than £350,000' they have ensured that the budget for the next financial year will increase by 'just £68,962' without diminishment of services.
Electors may well remember that last September these same councillors, who are so proud of their 'scrimping and saving', voted themselves an enormous increase in allowances. Allowances that would cost council tax payers some £100,000 in the first year alone and that apparently would be paid regardless of the councillors' attendance record.
Looking at these figures you do not have to be a mathematical genius to work out that without that increase in allowances the budget for the next financial year could have been reduced by £31,038 'without diminishment of services'.
Alternatively the budget could have been maintained at this year's level and £31,038 spent on improving services.
Charles Letchford
6 Vicarage Road
Okehampton
l See also, pages
16 & 33
GIVEN the special Tavistock interest involved it was understandable that you chose to report at length the £30,000 required to discover whether the apparent attractions of the offer to build modern offices 'free' with reduced running costs for the future, were real.
Pity though that this 'lost' the news that the council has accumulated £177,000 in the kitty due to be returned to us by reducing council tax, but decided to hang on to over £60,000 of it for a year or two 'to avoid an undesirable fluctuation in council tax'.
I've never personally met a resident who thought a downward fluctuation in council tax was 'undesirable', and I'm not sure that it is fair that residents dying or moving out should lose their share of the money and incomers pick it up.
Still, it saves some feel-good factor for us in the 2003 budget. A borough election year of course, but that is pure coincidence.
Nicholas Waterhouse
West Devon Council
member for Burrator