A £5.6 million savings package was signed off by Angus councillors in a budget meeting lasting little more than half an hour.
But the clear message coming from the authority’s finance spokesman is that very much tougher financial times lie ahead.
Last year the authority embarked on a three-year programme aimed at delivering £19m of cuts and Councillor Alex King said the plans remained very much on track.
Councillors heard changes to the meals-on-wheels service and youth justice set-up have delivered savings ahead of plan, and the authority has scheduled additional investment in areas including winter maintenance, adult services and broadband for rural schools in this year’s £242m budget.
Mr King warned, however: “The current situation is serious. The position is rapidly moving from serious to catastrophic as a result of the austerity approach being imposed from Westminster.”
Further cuts of £20m may be needed in Angus by 2019.
Opposition councillors in SNP-run Angus have been involved at the heart of the process through the cross-party Policy Budget Strategy Group but, despite no alternative budget or amendment coming forward to the 38-minute meeting in Forfar’s Town and County Hall, eight non-administration members recorded their dissent against approval of the spending plan.
“We have considered some very thorny questions and made some very difficult decisions,” said Mr King.
He said the strategy group had been involved in “wrestling with the unpalatable facts of life in the current financial era”.
And the finance spokesman repeated loud and strong the message delivered at the start of the new budget programme in 2014 that “the days ‘the council will dae it’ are past.”
Mr King said: “Unfortunately that message has still to sink in and be understood by a few members. The council can no longer afford to do everything it used to do and everything that the public would like us to do let’s be clear about that.
“The public will have to look at commercial providers of non-statutory services or do without them. Our new watchword must be need, not want.”
He added: “Capital projects must be properly programmed on that basis.
“There is no place for ward councillors to come to committee and say that they want something for their ward without a proper appraisal being done.”
Finance vice-convener Bill Duff welcomed an additional £1.5m of preventative roads work, adding: “Angus is managing its financial resources in a responsible manner to ensure stability for future years.”
There was relatively little comment on the spending proposals from outside the administration but Montrose member David May said some areas were a concern.
“The cuts we are having to implement in education are letting our children and schools down and, similarly, I am very unhappy in the reduction in adult day care places,” he commented.COUNCIL TAX FREEZE GENERATES HEATDivided opinion over Scotland’s 10-year council tax freeze was the one area that generated some political heat in the budget-setting meeting.
Approval of the budget plan means the Band D rate in the district will remain at £1,072.
“If we are foolish enough not to sign up to the policy of no council tax increase we would lose some £2.3 million of grant support,” said council finance spokesman Alex King.
He said that would require a £53 increase to every Angus bill “just to stand still”.
Mr King added: “To raise any significant revenue would require a significant rise in council tax £1m would require £76 on every bill. Freezing the council tax is a no brainer, to use a colloquial term.”
Former council leader Bob Myles, who headed the previous rainbow Angus Alliance, said the freeze was putting authorities “between a rock and hard place”.
“If we wish to improve our services, the only method is to increase council tax,” he said.
“According to draconian Scottish Government directives which would lose us this large sum of grant support, we cannot do that, so we have no option but to keep the council tax the same.
“Over 10 years the amount raised by just a small incremental increase would have been significant.
“Although I agree with the general direction of travel we are taking, I feel there are individual areas that are unpalatable and we should be looking at more creative ways of delivering savings there. We can make savings without delivering cuts,” said Mr Myles.
Councillor King responded: “A £100 increase would only raise about £4m. That would not have significantly improved the situation of £79m being taken out of our budget over the past 20 years.
“The council tax freeze is not a Scottish Government ploy, it is now a Westminster Government ploy, although it was introduced here and followed on at Westminster.
“When people are saying that they would accept a modest increase in council tax I don’t think they are speaking about £200/300 a year,” said Mr King.CHANGED DAYSFor many years, and until a time not so long ago, Angus Council’s budget meetings were marathon sessions of ill-tempered political bickering as corners were fought and points scored, writes Graham Brown.
Times have changed for myriad reasons, not least the dramatically altered financial landscape in which councils must operate.
Fiscal pressures have demanded a new level of pragmatism be applied to deciding how £250 million is spent annually in Angus, and some blunt messages from those with their hands on the purse strings.
That is why the echoes of 2014 remained so loud in this second phase of the three-year budget programme, when the chamber heard again that the days of the council doing everything and providing it all are long gone.
Much has also been made of the Team Angus approach, which has brought non-administration councillors into the heart of the budget-setting process which for 2016 is under way from this moment on.
But the dissention of a string of elected members at the bottom of the table yesterday reveals the cracks are there.
A warning that the situation is heading from serious to catastrophic will be a true test for all our elected representatives in the challenging months and years ahead.