Council Tax, Let US Decide How It's Spent!

lil_dancer300

Seeing that council tax has went up 4 1/2 % don't you think that we are paying extra and that we should decide on what the money is being spent on?
Shouldn't it be spent on more schools, librarys, street cleaning, colleges and refuge collection etc. Insted of councils deciding to waste the money on speed bumps, mini roundabouts (Increasing them aswell), pointless traffic lights, retarmacking roads (just before the end of the fincancial tax year)

I think that it would be a lot beneficial and satifing if the local comunity who are paying the inceasing council tax recieved a questionnare from the council on what to spend the money on.

How many unessercary roadworks are done in your area just before the end of the financial tax year?

I just wonder how much this is costing

duck_3

lil_dancer300 wrote: »

Seeing that council tax has went up 4 1/2 % don't you think that we are paying extra and that we should decide on what the money is being spent on?
Shouldn't it be spent on more schools, librarys, street cleaning, colleges and refuge collection etc. Insted of councils deciding to waste the money on speed bumps, mini roundabouts (Increasing them aswell), pointless traffic lights, retarmacking roads (just before the end of the fincancial tax year)

I think that it would be a lot beneficial and satifing if the local comunity who are paying the inceasing council tax recieved a questionnare from the council on what to spend the money on.

How many unessercary roadworks are done in your area just before the end of the financial tax year?

I just wonder how much this is costing

Well said...........

tom188

I wonder how much sending out a questionnaire and getting it processed would cost...

oldwiring

I do not know if it applies to council expenditure, but at one time in anything connecyed to public bodies like hospitals and (?) councils each year was discrete from the other and so there could be no carryover of unused allocations. Moreover, if a body did not spend it all, the next year it for less because it did not need it.

There is also the peril that, if a cutback is enforced, thereduced amount will be calculated on previous expenditure not on needs. Itnis a long time before most can remember, but in the 30s the government decreed massive cuts. One county had already been pardimonious in its road maintenace; it was cut back on its meagre budget, and for years after it had some of the wordt roads around.

As to speed bumps, some I can agree with, others not. We will never get money spent entirely on what we want, nor should we. It's the cost of being part of society and not a jungle.

RayWolfe

You already do decide.
Vote for and tell your councilors what your priorities are. If they say it's controlled by national government, vote for and tell your MP what your priorities are.
It's called democratic accountability ... what you're asking for is governance by referendum. Be careful of that route to happiness.

oldwiring

RayWolfe wrote: »

You already do decide.
Vote for and tell your councilors what your priorities are. If they say it's controlled by national government, vote for and tell your MP what your priorities are.
It's called democratic accountability ... what you're asking for is governance by referendum. Be careful of that route to happiness.

Government by referendum IMO is a recipe fro demogoguery not democracy.

duck_3

RayWolfe wrote: »

You already do decide.
Vote for and tell your councilors what your priorities are. If they say it's controlled by national government, vote for and tell your MP what your priorities are.
It's called democratic accountability ... what you're asking for is governance by referendum. Be careful of that route to happiness.

ok then its our money well spent.

I hope it goes up again next year(by about 10%) so that i can see even more inprovements !!!!!

exil

1. Education is no longer funded via the council tax

2. councils have little leeway on what to spend money on

3. councils can save money by (a) providing the same thing more cheaply (b) cutting services to the bone

As for speed bumps - they are largely put in due to local residents wanting them. Strangely, they don't like the idea of nitwits rat-running through local streets with kids playing in them at 60mph.

Of course, no-one likes them on the route they use to work/school.....

And if you think traffic lights are bad, have you not noticed the chaos that happens when they're out of order? And if you are on foot then when the lights change is the only chance you have of crossing the road.

ilovegreatdanes

theres a big roundabout that runs more smoothly when theres a traffic light failure.if anyones been at stairfoot roundabout near barnsley they will know exactly what i mean.theres even been a song composed about it!

exil

Don't know those lights but in a similar situation, the roundabout at J7 on the M62 is impossible to enter from the A57 westbound in morning rush hour when the lights aren't working. That causes a tailback which blocks the junction with the St Helens-Widnes road a mile further back. Now I travel by train!

I have to say my main bugbear is multi-lane roundabouts. To get on them you have to wait for no traffic on any of the 2 or 3 lanes of the roundabout to your right. After 10 minutes sitting there you offer up a prayer to your God if you have one and go for it, hoping the guy approaching from the right is wide awake and not talking to his mate on his mobile. I suppose the classic example of this is the roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, where the best plan is just to shoot out into the general maelstrom and hope for the best.