COLIN CAMPBELL: If Highland Council wants big tax rises, cut out the vanity projects
Council tax charges could rise by up to seven per cent next year and 15 per cent or more during the next three years.
People in homes in all tax brackets will wince at the prospect.
But that's the extra income needed to keep services functioning properly, say local authority chiefs.
There is no good time for councillors - acting at the behest of senior officials - to seek to impose an increase on this scale.
And in the light of recent events, there is nothing auspicious about the timing here either.
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I happen to think we aren't too badly served by Highland Council. A rather dubious survey appeared a couple of months ago which depicted this area as having the worst public services in Scotland. That seemed unfair.
As I said at the time, the council has a huge challenge in addressing the needs of such a vast and scattered region. And regardless of statistics, life in Inverness and in towns and villages across the north has distinct advantages over the grim reality of being trapped in the urban squalor and frequent lawlessness of some parts of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee.
The bins are emptied, the street lights work, the schools seem reasonably efficient and disciplined, and there is such demand to settle in Inverness that the place is relentlessly expanding, with the obvious criticism that it's expanding too fast.
But flaws and failings aren't hard to find. We've just had the Academy Street traffic debacle. The council would like to put that in the rear view mirror as soon as possible. But a vast amount of time and resources was spent on pressing ahead with hugely controversial plans to block the street off to most traffic, including the cost of a disputed court case which the council lost and which led to the scheme being scrapped. That was scarcely an exemplary use of council taxpayers' money.
Last year at this time, ambitious plans were in circulation to upgrade schools across the region and to build new ones. Amid bitter parental recrimination and profound dismay, all that shrunk to next to nothing when the council suddenly found they hadn't the money to pay for it. The scale of the miscalculation involved was baffling.
And as an upcoming seasonal reminder, the council couldn't even put on a Hogmanay concert at the Northern Meeting Park last winter without running up an extra £100,000 bill which needed a Common Good Fund bailout.
Let's hope the number-crunchers who have decided what level of council tax rises are needed weren't too closely involved in any of the above, but you can bet your bottom dollar they were.
The last council had a predilection for adorning the riverside with expensive artwork junk. The current one had visions of transforming the city centre into a tree-lined leafy net zero green paradise.
If councillors and their officials are demanding big council tax rises they should realise that their activities will be placed under ever greater scrutiny. And that hard-pressed taxpayers want them to steer clear of contentious vanity projects and concentrate fully on delivering the basics.
