A budget of nearly €137 million has been adopted for Galway County Council for next year, with an eleventh-hour extra allocation from the Department of Environment to partially offset a big shortfall from a decreased rates valuation for utilities divided up by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil councillors.
The interim Chief Executive Kevin Kelly reminded councillors there was no provision for contingencies in the 2016 budget which he described as challenging. There was €104m earmarked for gross expenditure and €32m spending for capital projects.
Commercial rates would remain unchanged for a seventh year at €66.59, with the exception of Ballinasloe which had its rate increased by €3 to €55. Almost half the businesses in Ballinasloe will see rates jump by €105 a year, with a plan to bring rates in line with other county towns by 2024.
A provision of €100,000 has been set aside to offset the cost of providing free parking for two hours across county towns, with municipal district areas to decide whether to introduce the measure in the New Year in exchange for a reduction in their roads budget.
Free all-day parking in the lead-up to Christmas in county towns has been agreed.
A gap of €750,000 emerged in the books when the Valuation Office revealed that it had set rates valuations for the utility companies such as the ESB and Eircom at a lower rate than previously for the next five years.
Following a meeting between Junior Minister at the Department of the Environment Paudie Coffey with a delegation of councillors, further funding of €573,000 will be handed to Galway Council Council for 2016, Cllr Jimmy McClearn (FG) told the meeting.
“What was a difficult situation is a very manageable situation now,” he remarked. “It’s important we’re not living in a negative world. It’s a positive world. It’s not all bad lads – cheer up. You don’t see any fruit in the tree.”
A pact between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil divided this amount up, including an allocation of €300,000 to roads maintenance, €50,000 for disabled person grants, €40,000 each for public lighting and economic development, €35,000 for community grants and €30,000 for street cleaning.
No matter which way you looked at it, the council’s coffers were still down on 2015 by €113,000, fumed Cllr Noel Thomas, who said he did not want to be associated with any remarks welcoming the additional grant.
The Fianna Fáil Councillor urged the council to spend money on cleaning out gullies which would save millions of taxpayers’ money on repairing roads, much of it unnecessarily if the gullies were cleared regularly.
Cllr James Charity (Ind) said with that kind of budget hole, Cllr McClearn was “looking a lot more link Grinch than Father Christmas”.
Sinn Féin’s Tom Healy said the local authority should seek to retrofit public lighting with LED lights, which would give an annual saving of €900,000 immediately.
Director of Services for Roads and Transportation Liam Gavin said a massive capital investment would be required to change the 13,000 lights across the county under the charge of the council. But he said the savings would be significant.
Cllr Shaune Cunniffe (Ind) lambasted the council for its lack of provision for bad debts for commercial rates. Cumulative uncollected debts were going to “paralyse” Galway County Council as some of these businesses were long gone and there was no hope of ever collecting them.
Mr Kelly said last year’s arrears were €10m with a bad debt provision in the books of €4m.
“The opinion of the auditor is it should be a bit higher but he’s broadly satisfied with the bad debt provision. Today, by increasing that provision, you have to decrease expenditure somewhere else,” he explained.
Cllr Tim Broderick (Ind) said councillors were like ostriches in the sand, refusing to deal with the issue of uncollected rates and if the council were a business it would cease to exist with that level of debt.
The extra €577,000 in funding, as proposed by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, was passed, with seven voting against it, including the Sinn Féin councillors, Independents Shaun Cunniffe, Tom Healy, Jim Cuddy and James Charity.
The overall budget was adopted with 24 of the 39 councillors voting in favour of it.
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