An Angus Council budget which will see £10 million of savings in the coming year and around 170 jobs axed by the authority was agreed in less than 45 minutes.
No alternative budget was presented, but 10 opposition councillors recorded their dissent over the £247m spending plans.
The budget will see a charge introduced for the collection of garden waste, reduction in school music tuition subsidy and a 25p per week increase in the area’s community alarm charge.
It also includes a £500k saving from the controversial review of housing support/sheltered housing, a move that will result in the loss of 28 jobs as the authority continued to investigate alternatives to providing a tenancy support service for the elderly.
Angus finance convener Alex King said the third year of the authority’s three-year budget programme had involved some “thorny problems and extremely difficult decisions”.
He told the chamber: “The ongoing implications for the revenue budget have now moved from serious to catastrophic solely as a result of the policies of financial austerity being imposed from Westminster.”
He said a council tax increase of £626 over the past two years would have been required to avoid the “savage” cuts into services.
“Angus Council can no longer afford to provide the wide range of non- statutory, though desirable, services.
“The public are going to have to pay to get some services which were previously provided free of charge, they are going to have to look to using commercial providers, or just do without them.”
Finance vice-convener Bill Duff said the complex negotiations around the setting up of integration joint board for health and social care had been one additional stress in the budget process, as well as the “lateness and low value of the government settlement”.
Opposition councillors criticised the Scottish Government for “holding Angus to ransom” over the controversial issue of penalties for breaking a council tax freeze now entering its 11th year and which will maintain the Angus Band D rate at £1,072.
Montrose councillor David May said: “We are having to make hugely unacceptable cuts in the services we have to offer.
“The settlement is disastrous and we are being bullied into acceptance.”
Arbroath member David Fairweather added: “John Swinney kiboshed any prospect of an alternative budget being put forward.
“This is a budget which generates uncertainty for our elderly and vulnerable and brings in a back door council tax increase for the green bin collection.”
Kirriemuir councillor Ronnie Proctor said: “The intransigent attitude of the Scottish Government has made it very difficult for us. What’s the point of having local authorities if we don’t have fiscal independence?”