Cllr Helen Dick and I have now submitted to the City Council Liberal Democrat proposals to improve the council’s Revenue and Capital Budgets. We will have amendments to both the revenue budget and the capital budget at the Budget Meeting next Thursday but will look carefully at the ideas coming from the other political groups.
In the revenue budget, by using unallocated and not legally committed money in the City Development budget, we propose saving the much-needed visiting specialists in Music and PE in the city’s primary schools and also reversing the proposed cut of music instructors contained in the SNP administration’s proposals. The feedback we have had from constituents is that they see any proposal to cut music and PE instructors and specialists as highly detrimental to our schools and this should be stopped.
In the capital budget, we say “pupils before council offices” by cutting out over £5m of proposed expenditure on new depots and a headquarters for the council’s Environment Department and spending it instead on improvements in city primary schools. Since I made clear that we felt that, after spending over £35 million on the new Dundee House and other sums on other council offices, the council should be redirecting its resources to schools rather than yet more money being spent on offices, I have been inundated with local people telling me they agree with this stance.
The Liberal Democrat Capital Budget proposals would also see the establishment of a £100 000 unadopted roads budget and a £100 000 budget to improve car parking in council estates.
Some years ago, the City Council had a working party to look at improving car parking in council estates and then one ‘pilot’ new car park in part of Douglas that has proved a success. But it has done nothing further to make improvements in other areas. There are many estates in the city that would benefit from improved car parking and I have highlighted the Pentland area. There needs to be funding to move this forward.
On unadopted roads, there are a small number of really poor conditioned unadopted roads in the city. The council already has an unadopted pavements programme but does nothing about unadopted roads – an example is the appallingly badly conditioned Shaftesbury Place in the West End Ward and there are other examples across the city. In Shaftesbury Place, a resident broke his ankle falling into what I can only describe as a pitted road that resembles the surface of the moon. £100 000 won’t solve the problem right across the city but it would make a start and recognise there’s a real issue here.