How Would You Think Different ? Council To Plug £30mil Hole
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The council usually take on seasonal staff during the busy grass cutting season, but this year they don’t seem to have bothered.
@NJones 2023 wrote:
The council usually take on seasonal staff during the busy grass cutting season, but this year they don’t seem to have bothered.
waste of good compost that, never mind good potting soil if dropped in a worm farm.
The lighting unit in our street lights is being changed , gone is the warm orange glow to be replaced with a pure white light. I presume after the initial outlay these lights will use less electricity,last longer and in the long run save money.Well I hope that is the reason behind the change!
https://www.wrexham.gov.uk/assets/pdfs/financial/statement_of_accs_1112.pdf
What happened in the end? What was saved, and are we being kept informed about how those savings are working and asked to play our part?
The financial statements seem to say that there are 15 senior teachers on £60,000 per annum or more, and 13 council officers on £60,000 or more. They will no doubt be very bright and capable people, because we have some excellent schools and public services across Wrexham. Has the Leader asked each of the 28 key people where money can most effectively be spent and saved. If we each had to reduce spending at home or work, we can all find a sizeable difference somewhere.
We spend £374m before operating costs and finance costs are added, and we receive £160m in income against that expenditure. The other money to make up the income comes from central government?
In all the lines of expenditure, can any of the 28 people identify money we can save or spend better? That is a start?
On specific items the community could question, what are corporate & democratic core at £3.5m, non-distributed costs £1m, other operating expenditure £19m, financing £38m or £16m after investment income.
There is £40m that could be challenged for starters.
We all treasure education, with a spend of £146m, can the 15 teachers make a difference to the way this is spent?
Housing is £114m, is important to us, but is a lot of money, and what could we do different here?
The £54m on cultural, environmental and regulatory services must have opportunity for improvements in the way money is spent?
What do the 28 key people say?
And what do the councillors say about the £40m for starters?
@NJones 1846 wrote:
Great idea- give all the councillors iPads to replace the old laptops they never used. Oh no they’ve already done that one!
Having iPads at meetings would allow councillors access to online meeting papers and reduce the need for printing reams of documents, could actually over time reduce costs by saving on paper, staff, printers or MFD’s and IT consumables . iPads should have been obtained on a corporate contract at vastly reduced cost not what you and I would pay.
Some decisions from the outside look frivolous but you need to be able to understand the whole picture and impactWhat I would say about the printing costs argument in favour of iPads is that I still see a lot of chunky agendas being printed out for meetings.
MAGgy;4503 wrote:Having iPads at meetings would allow councillors access to online meeting papers and reduce the need for printing reams of documents, could actually over time reduce costs by saving on paper, staff, printers or MFD’s and IT consumables . iPads should have been obtained on a corporate contract at vastly reduced cost not what you and I would pay.
Some decisions from the outside look frivolous but you need to be able to understand the whole picture and impactThis is proposterous and anyone who believes this lives in cloud cuckoo land.
Now I love tablets, I love laptops and computers… but…
ipads are good for reading ebooks, but they are absolutely useless for reference work in meetings. Why you ask? Because humans need to cross reference in meetings quickly, but they can only remember between 5 and 9 bits of information at any one time… ask any pyschologist. That means the need to look at different sources of information at anyone time. Now looking at three pages at once on a ipad is clunky, clumsy and difficult. Whether it’s very easy with three sheets of paper.
@Liam 4513 wrote:
What I would say about the printing costs argument in favour of iPads is that I still see a lot of chunky agendas being printed out for meetings.
Its good there are figures so an actual saving can be ‘benchmarked’ eventually :D
@thewayneinspain 4514 wrote:
This is proposterous and anyone who believes this lives in cloud cuckoo land.
I am probably half way in the sky ;)
At the last meeting I was in, and it would be good to get Liam’s view as well as he was there, but there were councillors using the ipads to flick through the documents referred to.
I do agree flicking about is not practical, and usual w.com practice is whoever is going prints a few pages off and then uses ipad (or other device) as well as its easier.
Agendas are a different beast as they are usually half an inch thick and hopefully the reports are all read prior to the meeting so having a quick reference could work.
Based off some first hand interactions I think the iPads are new territory to some councillors and such initial steps are needed before going to a full e-version.
I also think that everyone’s ‘e’ life is different. Some prefer documents, some prefer cloud meta searching mishmashes (me!), some like touch screens and some need keyboards for example. I dont think there is a full digital solution out there that fits all nuances at the moment.
We will all be talking about Councillors being given Google Glass before long anyhow… it is the future! :D
what i mean is that they will still need to print stuff off as you point out yourself sometimes you just need to other reading material too whilst in meetings.
@Rob 4516 wrote:
Its good there are figures so an actual saving can be ‘benchmarked’ eventually :D
I am probably half way in the sky ;)
At the last meeting I was in, and it would be good to get Liam’s view as well as he was there, but there were councillors using the ipads to flick through the documents referred to.
Some did seem capable of using their iPads to view agendas, but I would say the majority still have a printed agenda as well as or instead of their iPad. If they really want to make the saving they should print a very minimal amount of agendas and insist that councillors who do have an electronic device try and use it where possible. The real proof will be seeing what printing costs for meeting are like twelve months on from the introduction of councillor iPads.
All that said I’m a bit of a hypocrite in that I like having a printed off agenda for reporting purposes. It’s a lot easier for making notes on and highlighting key points.
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