Compromise reached on city budget

Date Published: 08-Dec-2009

A COMPROMISE set of proposals on the city’s budget for 2010 has been agreed after a hectic weekend of behind the scenes negotiations, the Sentinel has learned.

Last night’s budget meeting of the City Council was adjourned as a mark of respect due to the death of the father of Labour councillor, Billy Cameron, but agreement on the new financial package for2010 is expected to be reached at next Friday’s reconvened meeting.

The controlling pact on the Council – made up of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and three Independents– is understood to

have secured a ‘watering down’ of two key elements of the estimates.

City Manager Joe MacGrath, in his 2010 Draft Annual Budget, wanted the waiver on annual waste payments only to apply on the standing charge of €159, with all householders paying their ‘by weight’ bin charges in full. However following negotiations over the weekend, the charges will only ‘click in’ for the waiver customers when they exceed a certain weight for their bins.

Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Independents Terry O’Flaherty, Declan McDonnell and Donal Lyons, would have been facing considerable political flak from Labour if the waiver for the bin contents was to be scrapped completely.

However the controlling pact on the Council was also mindful of the fact that if they didn’t bend to some extent on the issue, the possibility existed of the City Manager ‘pulling the plug’ completely on the Council’s waste collection service.

In his Draft Budget report, the City Manager warned that “the continuation of this subsidy is unsustainable and will ultimately undermine the financial viability of the service, employment within the service, and our ability to fund other much needed projects”.

The other main change secured in the proposals of the City Manager centres on his proposed increase in the charge for commercial water – to go up from €1.60 to €1.90 per cubic metre, an increase of 18.75%.

In his Draft Report, Mr MacGrath said that it was no longer “feasible for Galway City Council to provide this level of subsidy and the charge must now be applied at the economic cost”.

However, the Sentinel has learned that this increased charge will now be introduced on a phased basis over the next two to three years.