Yesterday the Executive at North Yorkshire Council met and discussed the budget for the next financial year. This was a more or less ‘a choreographyed play’ played out in the public domain with each member having a part to play in it. It took a little over 12 minutes for them to finally get into critisizing certain other councils including a neighbouring council and showing how great they and officers are at North Yorkshire. They also chose to critisize an organisation in Whitby.
Certainly in the briefings we have had it has been all about ‘loss of this and loss of that’ and how Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) has saved the council and the planet.
As Reform Councillors we have had an amount of discussion with the chief financial officer but we never going to be ‘privey’ to how things are really going as there are only 3 of us amongst 90.
We need Reform but we will all have to wait until 2027 to see if the public also want Reform and at that point we should be able to do something. North Yorkshire Council say they have done things ‘to the bone’ but they found money for Kex Gill road, they found money for the football pitch in Scarborough, they found money for the Water Park in Scarborough, they found money to go to court regarding Whitby Harbour (which they lost) and they found money to keep a building company going—did you know councils build houses? No neither did I until I became a councillor and the best bit is one of their directors is on £150k a year.
So keep the faith and expect Council Tax to go up 4.9999% this year.