Council to examine spending cuts to avoid rate rise

An initiative to try to ensure 'that small businesses are not forced to the wall' was put forward by a senior Meath County Councillor this week as councillors sat down to plan a budget for 2009. The package of proposals to prevent a 3.95 per cent rise in the county"s commercial rate for 2009 was put forward by Cllr Seamus Murray of Fianna Fail. The Trim Area councillor is to meet Meath County Manager, Tom Dowling, with council chairperson, Liz McCormack, this Friday to discuss the list of cuts he had proposed at the annual budgetary meeting of the council on Monday. Councillors adjourned a decision on the budget to Thursday 18th December to allow the manager and officials to consider Cllr Murray"s proposals. Cllr Murray said that the proposed 3.95 per cent rise in the rate could not be justified at a time when survival was becoming more difficult for businesses in Meath. Some of the areas he targeted for cuts were tourism, heritage and the arts, saying that these had all benefited from generous increases in more prosperous times. However, his plan to cut spending on tourism was strongly opposed by Fine Gael councillor, John Farrelly, chairman of Meath Tourism. The county council"s head of finance, Fiona Lawless, presented a budget with spending of €107,933,643 for 2009. Central to the budget is the proposed 3.95 per cent rise in the rate. Ms Lawless added that every one per cent rise brought in €211,000 and half of income from rates came from the top big 20 customers. For smaller businesses, the 3.95 per cent rise worked out at less than 80c weekly after tax, she said. Some of the major costs in the budgeted spending are €3,368,005 on loan charges and €4,502,854 on water/sewerage supply from other local authorities, including Fingal. The council has some €12 million less to spend this year than in 2008. For example, its share of the Local Government Fund has been cut by €1.8 million. In the road transport/safety area, proposed spending for 2009 is €30,570,775 but income anticipated from grant funding is just €20,359,907. One area where income is also significantly down is planning application fees. The decrease in planning income was reported at €650,000. One FG member who declared that he could not support the proposed rate increase was Cllr Patsy O"Neill who said it was 'unjust and unfair' and a form of 'stealth tax'. His fellow FG member, John Farrelly, focusing on the 'big customers' in rate-paying mentioned by Ms Lawless, said these included the ESB, Eircom and others who just passed the bill on to their consumers. Cllr Farrelly was concerned about one of the council"s major rate-payers, Tara Mines in Navan, where a 'survival package' is under consideration to offset the effects of drastic drops in zinc demand. His chief point was that the cut in the tourism budget, proposed by Cllr Murray (€30,000) was 'completely unwise', in view of the numbers of jobs it was providing now in Meath and the level of business it was attracting to the county. A suggestion made by FG councillor William Carey was that the county council not pay the €200,000 estimated for remediation of the Basketstown landfill dump. Since it was going to be up to 20 years before it was fully remediated, opting out for one year would hardly matter, he argued. Cllr Jenny D"Arcy (FG) was concerned that just two staff in Meath were dealing with homelessness compared to about 20 in Dublin. When was the proposed hostel to be built, she asked, as some people were living under bridges in Meath now. Cllr Tommy Reilly (FF) paid tribute to director of services Brendan McGrath and his staff for their work in clearing the Disabled Persons" Grants (DPGs) backlog. The three-year capital investment programme also was presented to members on Monday. The total for this is €536 million, covering such areas as housing, environment, water and sewerage. One of the items brought up was the design of the planned new council corporate headquarters at a cost of €4.8 million. Last year, councillors had agreed to press ahead with the programme for this facility. However, on Monday, the general view was that the design work could not be proceeded with in 2009 at this cost. The huge drop in development levies from a peak of €35 million in 2005 to just €16 million in 2008 also was referred to. Independent councillor Brian Fitzgerald wondered how the council could expect to take in the estimated €28.9 million in 2009 in view of the fall-off already occurring. Some of Cllr Murray"s cuts also included €100,000 in development management spending, €100,000 in heritage/conservation. €70,000 in the arts programme and €100,000 in motor taxation administration costs. Cllr Murray and FF member Cllr Oliver Brooks both were concerned about the issue of quarries. Cllr Murray said a levy on quarry extraction had been proposed but did not appear to have been included in the estimates. Ms Lawless, in the budget presented to councillors, outlined measures to cut staff by three per cent in line with a directive from the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. No permanent staff are losing their jobs, she said, but 19 contract staff had been given notice. The position of all contract staff is to be reviewed on a monthly basis. Payroll costs account for €41,747,000 of the council"s spending.