Why I voted against the Cork City Council budget

THE axing of new public lighting, estate resurfacing and traffic calming programmes, coupled with grossly inflated wages for the position of Lord Mayor and the insistence of some councillors on wasting money on conferences, were among the reasons I voted against the 2012 Cork City Council Budget.

I am not a naysayer for the sake of it but could not, in the interests of fairness, agree to levels of mayoral pay and expenses remaining untouched while all other areas fell victim to the axe.

Accused of playing politics with the budget, I will gladly do so if that means standing up for the people who put me in the council to try to change the way things are done there. Clearly, a majority of other Cllrs — all of Labour and Fine Gael and all but one in Fianna Fáil — had no such concerns. The business community, meanwhile, continues to bear almost 39% of the cost of running the city through a regressive rate of valuation. I was the only councillor to vote against the striking of the annual rate, principally because I cannot see how businesses can sustain it in light of the increased VAT rate and resultant waning of consumer spending. What we need is a new early payment incentive for rate payers to somehow ease the burden.

Of course, there would be less of a struggle to balance local council budgets if funding from central government had not been slashed by 9% by the new FG/Lab administration. The hypocrisy of the city council pact was evident when a FF councillor bemoaned this latest cut: he would have done well to note that this funding has been cut by 38% since 2009 when his party was in government.

The more things change...

Cllr Mick Finn

Independent

Cork City South Central