Following the news that Councillors were presented with two options during a meeting of Conwy Council’s cabinet – either a rise of 4.22% or 5%, and that a 4.6% increase will be recommended to full council, Janet commented:
“This proposed extra increase will hit the communities and hardworking people of Conwy hard”
“Already, all of us rate payers have seen, for example, band D charges increase from £1,049.64 in 2010/11, to £1,342.37 this financial year”
“Whilst taxes keep creeping up, our services are declining, such as the move to four weekly bin collections, and the closure of primary schools”
“As always, Conwy County Borough Council are turning to the people of Aberconwy to compensate for the burden placed on it by the Welsh Government which has cut the financial settlement by almost 7% since 2013/14”
“Carwyn Jones does have a lot to answer for, especially given that the Conservative Government even tried to help Local Authorities by giving the Welsh Government around £100 million so that hard-press households could have a council tax freeze””
“What the Council should do in this situation before demanding even more of our hard earned money, is look carefully at how it is spending the cash we already pay. Shockingly, they wasted £1.4million on creating a quarry on north shore, and are paying, through a PFI scheme, £175.1m for three schools which are worth a total of £40.7m”
“Surely, Conwy has a third option: to implement a system of careful and responsible spending, and look at the millions it has in reserves, before adding to the 178% council tax increase we have already seen”
Notes
On 14/02/17 the Cabinet resolved to recommend that Council Tax be increased by 4.6% for 2017/2018
On 31 March 2016 Conwy had £27.2million in reserve