Council budget cuts

[paulb]

makes sense not.

[turningright]

i have a suggestion, if, in fact, the needs of the many truly do outweigh the needs of the few, as we are so often fed.

 

i suggest we sack Willie Shannon and redistribute his size-able salary.

 

this is by no means a personal attack on the fellow, but he was absent from his post for 4 months recently and the sky didn't cave in so he obviously isn't the glue that holds it all together if your picking up what I'm putting down...

 

if it works we could try sacking a few more, kind of like corporate jenga,

if it goes as well as i suspect it would and we clear the decks of perhaps 60% of them we could all knit and play music all day long.

[icepick239]

i have a suggestion, if, in fact, the needs of the many truly do outweigh the needs of the few, as we are so often fed.

i suggest we sack Willie Shannon and redistribute his size-able salary.

this is by no means a personal attack on the fellow, but he was absent from his post for 4 months recently and the sky didn't cave in so he obviously isn't the glue that holds it all together if your picking up what I'm putting down...

if it works we could try sacking a few more, kind of like corporate jenga,

if it goes as well as i suspect it would and we clear the decks of perhaps 60% of them we could all knit and play music all day long.

Could this writer be DC in disguise, having a second pop at Oor Wullie?

I'm only asking.

[peeriebryan]

Hmm...

 

Abolish knitting and appoint a dialect co-ordinator for 3 years at a MUCH higher cost!

The Dialect Co-ordinator post is funded by a partnership between LEADER, SIC Schools Service, Shetland Amenity Trust, Shetland ForWirds and Shetland Arts. I'm not sure how you've concluded that the position is at a "much higher cost" than knitting, which cost the SIC around £130,000 a year

 

Not only appointing a dialect co ordinator but appointing a dialect co ordinator from South (not a native of Shetland in any shape or form!!!!)

Bruce Eunson, a broad spoken Shetlander, is the dialect co ordinator - http://www.shetlanddialect.org.uk/dialect-co-ordinator

[skaterboy]

We all know cuts are needed but can we agree on where they should be.

lets have some suggestions from folk on here and see if we can do better than the muppets in the toon hall.

 

For me I would cut the archives for the simple reason that the only info that comes out of there has to fit Brian Smiths political aspirations or it gets buried.

 

No travel expenses for councillors, I don't get taxis paid for when I go to work in the morning so why the hell should they.

 

cut the number of councillors, If the man that comes third still gets in, and becomes convenor then something is seriously amiss.

 

cut jobs too many council employees doing very little for their wages, get rid and maybe those that are left will actually do a fair days work for a fair days pay.

(and before you start I know plenty of council workers that readily admit to doing less than a couple hours of actual work in an 8 hour day)

[Ghostrider]

^^ The axed knitting lessons cost what was it, £130,000. Yet we have an Assistant CE who no one seems to know what he does, or has done, and a very recently created post of Asset Management or whatever it was, that between them costs at least £130,000, very probably more. Save those wages, and keep the knitting, simples.

 

The council functioned perfectly well before either was appointed, I'll take a lot of convincing that without them right now we'd be any worse off.

 

Service levels and delivery to end users should be the very last resort when cuts come along, yet they're always among the very first. That kind of logic and reasoning annoys the living c*ap out of me. I don't buy it that there isn't a level of over-staffing on the admin/planning/management side of just about everything the council does that could be pared down a bit, nor do I buy that all the "procedures" and filling in every form in triplicate that goes on couldn't be streamlined either.

 

Bottom line, even if there was no "office" back up, the service delivery staff could still muddle through and deliver something of a service without them. The "office" side of things contributes hugely disproportionately less to service delivery than the actual service delivery staff, so they provide considerably less value for money in the bigger picture. That's where the cuts should hit hardest, few admin tasks cannot be streamlined, simplified and have duplication and triplication etc eliminated, and just how many managers do you need to manage anyway, most council services once set up chug along replicating on a daily/weekly etc cycle, managing of those are minimal surely.

[Carlos]

Bear in mind that it's the auditing/performance indicator/accountability side of things that national government insist on as essential if you want to keep your funding, and the front line services bits that are more optional.......

[peeriebryan]

For me I would cut the archives for the simple reason that the only info that comes out of there has to fit Brian Smiths political aspirations or it gets buried.

 

So you'd "cut the archives" because you don't agree with one person's interpretation of some of the documents?

 

You state that "info" "gets buried" - perhaps you could elaborate? Have visited the archives in order to carry out your own research, only to be thwarted because the member of staff in question has hidden the required documents from you?

 

And what would your "cut" comprise? Close the search room? Skip the documents and records?

[JustMe]

skaterboy wrote

If the man that comes third still gets in, and becomes convenor then something is seriously amiss.

Not really that amiss. The way our electoral system now works is that we have three councillors to most wards which is in some ways a good idea in that we have a choice of councillors to approach if we want help, guidance or to make a complaint.

 

In fact if you check the 2007 election results you will find that Sandy Cluness came second in terms of first preference votes.

 

As for becoming convenor even if Shetland was just one ward returning 22 councillors then it would still be up to the elected councillors to select a convenor and if they wanted to choose the person who came in last in the popular vote then that would be entirely up to them.

 

Of course there is another way. We could have 21 councillors elected in the normal way and to have the whole of Shetland elect a convenor. Would need a change of law but might make sense.

[JustMe]

I believe that while most people in Shetland acknowledge the need for savings we all have our own ideas of what we think could be cut and what needs to be preserved at all costs. And indeed what we think the council needs to spend more on. Perhaps some people believe that there is no need for budget cuts at all as what is needed is better use of the council's investments to produce more income.

 

My view is that the SIC is relatively rich compared to many councils and that it is not unreasonable for them to provide more services including knitting lessons if that is what the people wish.

 

I also believe that what the majority of Shetland residents would like to see cut is instances of the council wasting money. But of course we would not all agree on what is waste so I think we need a consultation on where our council wastes money. A wide consultation involving every adult in Shetland and also every school class to come up with their ideas on what is waste of money.

 

Ok so that is over to me so to kick off I would like to nominate the recycling bags that are delivered to homes in Lerwick and I believe Scalloway as well. Nothing against the bags or the concept of recycling but I do seem to have a couple of years worth of spare bags and I think we need some way to return them to the council for "recycling" to people who need more bags than I do.

[Guest Anonymous]

Does anybody know what the cost of analysing proposed budget cuts is?

 

eg. How much money has been spent employing staff to come up with the idea of cutting the knitting classes? Or indeed any other minor budget cut.

 

Surely the wages for these 'cost cutting staff' would be worth a look at, compared to the savings they actually make.

Their wages might be the kindest cut of all.

[lerwick]

Knitting was a poor place to start cuts in shetland, it kept a lot of folk alive in shetland not too many years ago. The rewards are better than ever today if you stick at it. Its not by any means easy money but who wants that anyway?

[piggywiggie]

I personally hated knitting at school but I still think it was important part of education. It was afterall a big way of life up here. I wish these days I could actually knit! Would come in handy for making a 'sicky blanket'

[Gorgonzola Butt-cheese]

If we descend back into the poverty of yesteryear, knitting will make a perfectly good revival amongst any of us who decide to stick it out in this environment.

The only reason it has almost died out is due to the wealthy lifestyles the majority of us enjoy.

Why spend all night knitting a jumper when we have tv, computer, cinemama and pubs galore and indoor sports centres !! etcetc.

 

Cuts are coming an they will come big - Small rural schools - gone.

Education- a lot more just sitting in the classroom being taught.

Care at home - hopefully will be maintained but unlikely to expand much further.

Council workforce - massive workforce reduction required ( especially management level)

Marreel - will have to swim unaided or sink

Sports centres - some will have to be mothballed ( could be turned into free knitting lesson centres when the bad times get here.....?)

Ferries - reduced sailings at non peak travel times + reduction in jobs and perhaps a doubling of fares for starters !!

 

If we blow the piggy bank on this giant wind farm, expect it to be even worse than the above

[shetlander]

If the necessary savings can be achieved in areas that don't affect frontline services then all well and good, but I'm just not convinced that's going to be possible. The fact is that the level of service provided by the SIC (and the number of staff employed to deliver them at all levels) far exceeds what is provided elsewhere and folk are going to have to face up to getting less. You only have to look at the brutal kind of cuts that are having to be considered by councils elsewhere to see how good Shetland has it.

 

As unwilling as they may be to say so publicly, most folk I know have seen the sense in many of the service cuts that have been suggested in recent years but have become resigned to the fact that when so much as a peep of opposition comes from somewhere, councillors always back down at the last minute.

 

Ideas to reduce the number of recycling bags or print on two sides of paper or stop providing free tea or coffee or whatever are sensible enough but in the grand scheme of things will save peanuts. Unless the council makes cuts in the most expensive areas (education, ferries and social work) and brings levels of provision down to a more financially sustainable level, it's never going to make any real headway savings-wise.