After two days of meetings which totalled over 12 hours of discussion and debate, along with numerous in committee meetings, the 31 elected members of Mayo County Council agreed on a budget which saw them cut the rate in the county by two and a half per cent, to bring it to 68.76 on Friday evening.
The councillors debated every programme on the council’s plans for the year and looked to find savings where they could bring down the rate, as every councillor agreed they needed to do what the could to help the business communities in the county. To cut the rate as proposed by Fine Gael whip Councillor Joe Mellett the councillors needed to cut €254,912 from the proposed budget put before them by County Manager Joe Beirne. However, the proposal by Cllr Mellett also saw his party want to include a figure of €2,000 to be allocated per councillor to be given out to community projects of their choosing and a figure of €100,000 to be put aside for an emergency fund to help the council cope with unexpected events such as the recent cold snap or the flooding that occurred at the tail end of last year. Cllr Mellett also proposed that the council make a solemn gesture of giving €5,000 to the Concern appeal for help for the people of Haiti which was devastated by a terrible earthquake. This left the councillors having to find €421,912 savings in the budget for 2010.
To make up these savings the elected members proposed that the councillors would cut their combined salaries by €37,612. They also cut the funding for conferences attended by councillors by €42,300. Savings in banking and overdraft charges of €50,000 and €100,000 were also earmarked as was a cut in the pension provision of the council by €140,000. To make up the shortfall still remaining Cllr Mellett proposed that the council should be able to bring in an extra €52,000 from the second home levy.
Over the course of Friday's mammoth meeting which continued from 11am to almost 6pm, a number of contentious issues were raised, including a proposal from Independent Cllr Richard Finn to abolish Strategic Policy Committees to save money. His suggestion was supported by fellow Independent Cllr Gerry Ginty. Cllr Ginty also hit out at the waste of money by the council on conferences attended by his fellow members. Fianna Fáil Cllr Al McDonnell also raised the issue of a potential change in the text of the county development plan which was agreed by the members after a long struggle over the course of 2008 and 2009 with the Department of Environment in relation to acceptable reports supplied by agents for planning permission applications. Cllr McDonnell said: “I'm shocked, that part of the paragraph was deleted from the development plan illegally, where do we go from here, this paragraph was not submitted in a verbal form but in a written form. Where do we go from here.”
Independent Cllr Frank Durcan also raised the issue of a potential rebate of €1,500 available to first time buyers. Cllr Durcan had raised the issue the previous evening at a Castlebar Town Council meeting after finding a section in the town development plan which said that any first time buyer who bought a house as their primary residence and the planning permission was granted after March 2004, they would be eligible for a rebate of €1,500 for both water and sewerage charges levied on the developer as long as planning permission was fully complied with. He questioned whether such a prevision also existed in the county plans, which he was told did.
