Budget Shortfall For Greystones

On golden beaches…

et again, because we’re all filthy rich and spoilt, Greystones’ municipal budget for the coming year is a bit on the low side.

Then again, Wicklow itself is about €4 million on the low side, reckons Gerry Walsh, the local councillor remarking, “How we address that is another day’s work”.

The draft municipal budget was adopted by the local council members, with only Cathaoirleach Tom Fortune voting against. Our part of the 2020 budget sees a discretionary €38,000 being allocated to the town, for the likes of tourism and Greystones Tidy Towns. So, the short end of the WCC schtick once again.

As before, the chief executive of the county council informed the Greystones councillors that if they did not adopt the draft budget, they may lose control of the €38,000.

Which, unsurprisingly, only riled our lads up even more.

Regarding that discretionary €38,000 as “a bit pathetic”, Cllr Derek Mitchell pointed out that other areas were receiving extra expenditure. We get that €2.7m for projects; the next lowest budget is Bray, with €10m, the reason given previously by the executive that other areas get 76% more than Greystones because they have more council houses. Mitchell did the maths [below,right], and, he says, the numbers don’t quite add up that way.

“”We are being lied to by the executive as to why this is happening,” he argued. “We deserve a far better explanation and analysis of the facts. We’re getting a quarter of what Bray gets and a fifth or sixth of other areas. It’s a disgrace.

“It’s absolutely clear that the property tax money is not coming here.”

District manager Michael Nicholson – who seemingly loves this town like a red-haired stepson – said the budget shortfall would have been higher without the increase in property tax, telling the councillors, “What will be presented to you guys is a balanced budget. We have all submitted our shopping lists to the head of finance. The head of finance will sit down with each of us and there will be a bit of horse trading.

“We will take the pain on your behalf,” he finished, pointing out that the crime is that the new houses being built since 2013 are not subject to property tax. “If every council kept its own LPT, some counties would be broke and some very, very wealthy.”

For Cllr Whitmore, the sums allocated in different areas were deemed historic back in 2014, and therefore it’s now “time to bring everything back to the same level. When is it going to be made fair so each district can expect the same for Tidy Towns, economic development, and so on?

“We were told that the council could work towards that,” she continued. “It’s not a budget at all. It’s a template, and we can take it or leave it. We’re not allowed to discuss it…”

Voting against adopting the budget, Cllr Fortune argued that “the bigger crime is the fact that so much of a budget is given away to people who can build bigger houses and pay less property tax“, going on to state that he had a problem with the whole process, and so, would “not be a hypocrite”.

You can check out our March 2019 post on our town levies going astray here.