After much discussion at a special meeting convened to discuss the 2012 draft statutory budget, the members of Kilkenny County Council voted in favour of cutting the commercial rate in the county by half a per cent.
The issue was hotly debated by the party members, who requested the meeting to be adjourned for half an hour in order to finalise details on an amendment to the initial proposal to keep the rates unchanged by the executive.
However the issue came to a vote and members of Fine Gael, Labour and the Greens voted on a Fine Gael-led amendment to lower the rates and take the funds to facilitate this from the maintenance road grant which would amount to €60,000 from the €1.68 million budget.
Cllr Mary Hilde Cavanagh (FG ) proposed the amendment and said, “We want to let people know that Kilkenny is open for business and our priority is to protect employment. We can’t cut grants to the poor, the elderly or the disabled or any vulnerable group. We believe that with the proposed return of the Community Schemes that the roads will be more than compensated for the loss to the road fund and although we would love to cut the rate even more, we’ve pored over the figures and there is no other way that we can see out of this.
“There is desperation out there for work and we need to protect jobs,” she said.
Meanwhile, Cllr Matt Doran (FF ) also sought a reduction of a half a per cent in rates but Fianna Fail disagreed with taking money from the roads maintenance fund in order to do so.
“We welcome any idea of a rate cut but we don’t want to see roads suffer as a result. We would like to look at what the council has saved in recent years under the Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS programme ) and where the savings are going. Would it be possible to use the maintenance money for RAS lettings for a rate reduction instead?” he asked.
The county manager pointed out that there was no legal way of transferring money from this particular scheme to facilitate a rate cut.
“There’s €600k in the RAS fund and maybe we could look at having some flexibility with this next year but we can’t divert money from this fund this year as it’s a matter for the Department. We can write to the minister to moot the idea for the future,” he added.
Cllr Cavanagh asked director of services John Mulholland how far the €60 k budget would go if it were broken down to €12 k per electoral area .
“I really don’t think that €12k per electoral area is going to damage the laneways of rural Kilkenny and that’s what €60k breaks down to,” said Cllr Cavanagh.
“Can you explain how much road this would resurface?” she asked Mr Mulholland.
“It would surface a quarter of a kilometre or 250 metres of road,” confirmed Mr Mulholland.
Cllr Doran reiterated, “There is €600k sitting in a bank account for a RAS fund while our roads suffer”.
Finally the members voted on the amendment put forward by Cllr Cavanagh to use €60k from the roads maintenance fund in order to cut rates by half a per cent and the motion was passed by 19 votes to seven.
Chairman of the council, Cllr Paul Cuddihy remarked, “We have agreed a budget and our rates are half of those charged in Kerry. We need more inward investment and hopefully this can help.”
