I would like to acknowledge the hard work that has gone into preparing this budget and the consultation process.  I have to say that the Conservative Group were disappointed because all the suggestions made to save on the council’s finances were met with justifications and reasons for the spending, however we believe that had some of these suggestions been undertaken it would certainly have saved a vast amount of money. 

I cannot agree to the decision to charge for admission to Captain Cook museum when there will be no charge for Dorman museum and Mima.

Over the past years we have boarded up and demolished houses.  If we had refurbished these houses we would now be receiving council tax of £1 million per year working on Band ‘A’ council tax.  This equates to 2%, and here we are asking the residents to pay an extra 3.5% on their council tax rather than take the Government’s 2.5% offer.  This will be bad for the economy of Middlesbrough.  How many times has the Mayor told us he needs people to come into town to spend their money?  People only have a certain amount of money to spend, and by the council taking an extra 3.5% from the residents there will be less money spent in the town.

I do believe that we must now work differently in the council. We should not be reliant on grants and money from parking etc. these are a bonus and should not be used as part of the budget setting process.  If we do not know how much money is coming in, we should not project it and end up with a deficit.  This is how we got into this mess in the first place, as over the past years we have relied very heavily on grants.  We should make sure every item ordered goes through a process of do we really need this, can we get it cheaper elsewhere, which budget will it come from, are we using money that could be put to better use.  Last week I received an envelope through the post with a 39p stamp.  This was sent out to all councillors.  The information was in an envelope with a label on it.  It could quite easily have gone into the internal mail without the envelope saving approx. £20 all these  £20’s add up we seriously need to get our act together on spending.  Once again I stress that we need to cut our cloth to suit.

In one of the previous council meetings Cllr McPartland stood up and told us that the residents from his ward could not afford to pay for a residents parking permit.  I did not agree with the parking permit myself, but it will be interesting to see how the Councillors who fought against this parking charge vote this evening, will they impose the 3.5% increase in council tax, (which equates to £30 on a Band ‘A’ property), on their residents or will they vote against the 3.5% to take the Government offer.

The conservative group will not be voting for this budget as we believe putting the council tax up by 3.5% would be not only to the detriment of the residents but to the detriment of the retail business of our town.

After I delivered this speech the Mayor stood up and told us our group had gone into this meeting with dirty hands.  We had not discussed with him about not accepting the 3.5% council tax!!!!!