Sad if council can’t afford to give people annual vote
PERHAPS one of the saddest things I’ve read in the Free Press in recent times was the news that, after this May, we’ll get to vote in Rossendale Council election not every year, but once every four.
To coincide with the re-drawing of council ward boundaries and a reduction in the number of councillors overall, Rossendale Council decided to look at whether we should get to vote on one third of councillors every year, or all of them once every four years.
It’s the second time in 18 months the council has discussed whether to make this switch.
Last time, Labour was opposed to it, but the Tories supported it.
This time, largely everyone was in agreement.
It’s still not clear to me where the change in heart from Labour councillors came from – although comments from council leader Alyson Barnes suggest tightening finances at the council have a part to play.
The fact that the council has put forward a discussion on how often we get to vote more times in the last two years than that it has put forward discussions on the Empty Homes Scandal – cost £10m and rising to the taxpayer – is quite alarming.
It’s also relevant here as one of the arguments put forward by the council when it asked if our right to vote for councillors could be reduced by 66% was that it would help save money.
Indeed, council chief executive Rob Huntington said at the time of the ‘consultation’ into changing voting plans, that it represented ‘a sound financial decision.’
“When budgets are as tight as they have been for some time, it allows us to allocate resources more efficiently, thereby reducing the costs associated with frequent election cycles and administration,” he said. What price democracy? Clearly too high for Rossendale Council to afford every year,and that should worry us greatly.
Could we afford democracy every year if the council wasn’t paying out for the Empty Homes Scandal – a topic which when raised by Sir Jake Berry recently, resulted in him being accused of trying to ‘intimidate’ the
local council?
If Rossendale Council was like other councils in Lancashire, where the ruling cabinet meets at least monthly or where many decisions every meeting were put before public discussion, maybe voting once every four years would be OK.
But given the cabinet meets infrequently and very few decisions are put
to it, the risk here is that council becomes further detached from voters.
Bear in mind barely a third of local people bother to turn out to vote in local elections. Maybe that is justification in itself for reducing the number of elections – if only a third of us can be bothered to vote, why should the council pay for us to vote every year?
Yet I still can’t escape the nagging sense that a council which says it can no longer afford to operate democratic elections every year is also a council which has lost its way.
Likewise, arguing that more infrequent elections result in more stability for long-term planning feels a bit odd too.
After all, the council is
here to empty the bins and licence taxis and pubs, amongst other things.
How does voting every year really interfere with the council’s plans to deal with these services?
It feels like a sad day for local democracy in Rossendale, the borough which can no longer afford to let its voters have their say every year.