Ian Yuill

Liberal Democrat councillor for Mannofield, Airyhall, Braeside, Broomhill, Garthdee, Kaimhill and Ruthrieston Learn more

City Council faces £45 million budget gap

by Ian Yuill on 2 March, 2019

Photo of Marischal CollegeAberdeen City Council is holding its annual budget setting meeting on Tuesday 5th March. Savings, cuts and additional income of around £45 million will be needed to produce a balanced revenue budget for 2019/20. The council will also be setting its capital, housing and Common Good budgets at this meeting.

My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I believe the council should do all it can to protect education, support the most vulnerable in our community and protect valued community facilities such as community centres and libraries. We also believe the council needs to do more to repair crumbling roads and pavements. The budget proposals the Liberal Democrats make at Tuesday’s budget-setting meeting will reflect these priorities.

The budget-setting meeting begins at 2pm on Tuesday and is open to the public. You can find the papers for the meeting here.

Sign up here to receive e-mail newsletters containing local news and information from Ian Yuill.

   5 Comments

5 Responses

  1. K Christie says:

    How could the council possibly think getting rid of school crossing patrollers is acceptable. You can’t justify putting children at risk. Any councillor voting in favour of this won’t be getting my vote come election time. Shame on ACC.

    • Ian Yuill says:

      The report from council staff includes a long list of ways to cut spending and increase income. Not all of these will be accepted by councillors, although many will have to be so the council can set a balanced budget as the law requires.

      Having said that, I certainly will not be proposing to cut school crossing patrollers.

  2. Grant Tairney says:

    How much is the Marischal Square development costing ACC (sorry, the local taxpayer)? Presumably the cost of this was factored in over the longterm? A development that apparently had no business case and the ACC is apparently paying £5M per annum to the developer for 35yrs! Plus reduced business rates to try and attract tenants – are we even generating £5m per year in rents? What about maintenance costs for the development? Taxpayer funded too? Another very questionable PFI deal putting all the risk on the taxpayer. The place probably won’t even last 35yrs. So one initiative to cut spending would be to stop embarking on unnecessary vanity projects rather than cutting essential public services.

    • Ian Yuill says:

      Yes, the council’s priority has to be providing the services Aberdeen’s residents depend upon as efficiently and effectively as possible.

      My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I did not support the Muse development, now Marischal Square.

Leave a Reply to Grant Tairney

You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>