Towards the end of July, I updated www.dundeewestend.com regarding the issue of councillor salaries and the fact that the Liberal Democrat Group on the City Council wished to see councillor salaries frozen this year because of the significant financial challenges facing the City Council (click on headline to view this update from 21st July).
As the previous updated indicated, we were prevented from moving such a motion at council committee as the Scottish Government regulations on councillor salaries do not permit local authorities to freeze or reduce the basic councillor salary or that of the Council Leader, not matter that such a decision was taken by a democratic majority on the council.
I therefore made a request to Finance Minister John Swinney to change regulations to permit councils to limit councillor salaries below the maximum level, should each council agree by democratic vote to cut or freeze them, but this request has been turned down by Mr Swinney. I do think John Swinney's response is seriously out of touch with the public mood. Public services are under very considerable financial strain and this is a time when all elected representatives should be showing restraint and putting public services first.
Both my Liberal Democrat colleague Cllr Helen Dick and I believe that public services matter and we have therefore told the Council's new Chief Executive David Dorward that we want to voluntarily reduce our own salaries to last year's level and we have asked that the money saved be used to benefit funds to community groups in Dundee.
The cut in our own salaries is about £400 each and we have asked Mr Dorward if the small projects grants funds managed by the Leisure and Communities Department for the benefit of local community groups in the city be increased by the saving made to the revenue salary by councillor salary cuts. Clearly if other councillors in the city and elsewhere in Scotland were minded to act in a similar manner, there would be a sizeable benefit to public services overall.
Ironically, I am writing this on the day "The Courier" reports :
'Swinney unveils spending cutbacks
FINANCE SECRETARY John Swinney yesterday dramatically hit the brakes on public spending in Scotland and heralded a new era of cutbacks.'