4:43pm Tuesday 12th December 2006
By Globe correspondent
WHY do we always keep reading about the effort Wirral Council is making to save money? We are not interested in saving the council money - we are interested in saving the ratepayers money.
It is a fallacy for the council to claim that if they charge more for their services this will keep the rates down to save the ratepayers money. Not if it is the ratepayers who pay the extra charges - this is an increase, not a reduction.
Take, for example, the proposal to spend £500,000 installing charging equipment to replace the free disc parking arrangements. This is expected to bring in £100,000 per year, with the claim that this will, eventually, save the ratepayers money. No it won't - it's the ratepayers who will be paying the charges (staff, machinery, offices, legal fees).
Parking fees charged to ratepayers are a cost, not an income. The council intends collecting additional money in coins from the motoring ratepayers in 100,000 inconvenient time-consuming visits to a ticket machine, taking the lion's share for their own wages and expenses, so any money returned to the ratepayers is simply giving them their own money back.
A mealy-mouthed argument could be that the new burden will fall only on a small section of the ratepayers - the motorists who come to Birkenhead to do business - and why should the existing cost, albeit small, fall on the general population? Only those who use a service should pay for it. This is nonsense - we all pay for the fire brigade, police, education, the environment, health centres, E.R.I.C., pavements, social services, hospital parking, libraries, public parks, drug rehabilitation, transport, regardless of whether we are in a position to make use of them pro-rata ourselves.
If we're going to have a system where those who use a public facility pay more than those who don't, can I now expect a rebate for those services I don't use?
Another argument could be that we need to ration parking to avoid congestion, and stinging the motorist is the only possible way to do this. Rest assured, motorists don't come to Birkenhead for a day out, they come only because they must; it only adds to congestion and their misery to spend additional time in the area, finding change, getting tickets, working the machines, and so on.
Whatever money Wirral Council is wanting to spend on collecting fines, maintaining machines, even counting and banking the money, could be far better spent on running a disc parking scheme. For the price of a bit of cardboard, the time allowed to motorists can be rationed just as effectively as with paid-for parking. Allow 30 minutes, one hour, two hours - whatever is appropriate for say a man buying a newspaper or visiting his bank or solicitor.
By avoiding the waste and expense of parking charges, clearly the ratepayers will benefit. Note that it is a matter of no importance whatsoever whether or not the council benefits. The council was created to serve the ratepayers and to save the ratepayers money - not the other way round.
David Parkins (a second generation member of RATS - Ratepayers' And Taxpayers' Society, founded by my father).Address supplied
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