Friday, November 6, 2009

HDC is whitewashing the dire situation!

On the HDC front page I found this piece on how the Council is going to examine ways of cutting the deficit the Council has been running for years. Initially I thought good! This is what the Council needs to do.

 
I then read this linked press release. Having read this press release I was concerned that this was a white wash of the the problems which HDC faces. The press release also said the whole Medium Term Plan (MTP) will be discussed at the next meeting of the Overview and Scrutiny Panel (Economic Well-Being) (OSP-EWB) on 12th November 2009.
So I looked up the Agenda for the meeting (linked here) and found yet another whitewash of a report. True you can find the following:





amongst the 22 pages in this whitewash.

Nowhere in the report does the Council actually address what services need to be cut. The line in the MTP still has these cuts as "unidentified". This is head in the sand mentality because these savings are the minimum and the HDC itself forecasts a need to continue making savings far into the future. Nowhere in the report are there proposals of where the £8.75 million will be cut!

This is a whitewash because HDC is saying: "...will be setting out proposals demonstrating how it intends to balance its budget....". I see not demonstration. All I see is whitewash.

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