IT seems incredible, just days after it was revealed the council is spending £100,000 on a tree survey, that plans to spend a similar sum providing new furniture for the council chamber are now even being considered.
In response to the tree study last week, this newspaper posed the question whether councillors are out of touch with the public that elected them.
The suggestion that perfectly good tables and chairs should be replaced on a whim will add weight
to the arguments of those inclined to have answered "yes" to this question.
Since being elected over a year ago, the new administration has constantly pleaded poverty. It claimed that the ousted Labour administration had left the city's books in a mess and used the need to bring the ship back on to an even keel as an excuse for a radical cost-cutting exercise.
The proposed cuts have, or will, hit almost every voter in the city in some way. Schools and crèches are closing and all headteachers have been ordered to make savings. Summer playschemes for children have been axed. Community groups have seen their funding slashed and vital services for the elderly have been cut back. All this has been done in the name of the need to make economies.
While officials have doubtless been ordered to find ways of saving money within their departments, the council at times seems oblivious and insensitive to the real hardship the axing of some frontline services is causing in communities across the city.
First there was the suggestion that officials investigate the cost of reinstating ceremonial robes dating from the 17th century – which were rightly consigned to storage in 1996 by Labour – for councillors to wear at ceremonial occasions. After an outcry, the new administration wisely went cold on the idea and mothballed it.
To a degree, it is understandable that the council spent £2 million on improvement works to the chambers. It is, after all, an important public building and deserves to be preserved.
But few gain access to the main council chamber itself, and a decision to spend £100,000 on new desks and chairs for councillors is unnecessary – considering they spend only one afternoon a month conducting business there. In such times, items like this are luxuries rather than necessities.
There are far more pressing problems to be addressed. For one, a lack of teachers and textbooks at some schools and inadequate school meals being served.
If the council has money to burn there are far more pressing problems to be addressed. It is time councillors got their priorities right – and if they don't know what those priorities are, they should ask the public how they would prefer to see their money spent.
The full article contains 468 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
