I seem to recall the phrase “magic money tree” being bandied around a lot in the past year.
Here’s hoping a few of them have been planted in time for spring – and not just to help Fife Council reduce its budget by the £29 million or so required this year.
The usual platitudes will no doubt be rehearsed over the coming weeks: “difficult decisions have to be taken”, “we have to change the way we do things”, “efficiencies”, blah, blah blah.
We know the drill at this time of year.
But there are a number of real questions looming large on the horizon for public bodies such as councils and health boards, across Scotland that no-one has really been able to answer, although the solutions all involve money. A lot of it.
The stuff that makes the world go round seems to be in short supply, and for the life of me I can’t see a light at the end of the tunnel.
For starters, most motorists only need to drive a short stretch to see the mess that Fife’s roads are in after the recent spell of winter weather. The roads maintenance backlog was already eye-wateringly huge at the last count, and the pothole problem is not going to go away. So that’s going to be one area where money needs to be diverted.
Secondly, with people living longer and a growing older population, all regions are going to struggle to get a grip on health and social care.
With that in mind, the fact that Fife Council is liable for part of the health and social care partnership’s projected overspend should also be cause for financial concern. The move towards getting people out of hospital and into community care settings is the right one, but it still needs to be backed up with proper investment.
And then we’ve got the schools issue in Dunfermline and west Fife. The fact that around 95 west Fife families have been left in limbo about where their children will go to school due to catchment and capacity issues is shocking enough, but perhaps even more so when you consider it was entirely avoidable.
Councillors were warned by officials last year that a delay over catchment rezoning would result in many youngsters failing to get a place at their local school, yet they asked council officers to effectively go back to the drawing board.
Lo and behold the warning has come to pass.
It is what it is though and, while it’s clear lessons will be learned from the current catchment debacle, the key issue is the over-riding need for new schools to alleviate the problems.
And yes, you guessed it, that needs investment.
Plenty of food for thought for politicians ahead of budget time then. It will be interesting to see what’s digested.
