Cllr. Mace's response to the City Cabinet’s Budget proposals, based on his speech at Budget Council on 4 March 2009, as Leader of the Conservative Group.

Wages and salaries paid for by Council Tax are such a high proportion of the Council’s total expenditure that we kid ourselves if we pretend we can make significant financial cuts without also causing significant job losses. In this year's budget, a restructuring reserve has been created of nearly £1m to be used for redundancy payments and for paying compensation to encourage early retirements. Instead of paying for services, the taxpayers of this District will be paying for some of the City’s current employees NOT to work to provide the services we regard as part of the fabric of local life.

If only a few jobs had been removed from the City Council's establishment each month by failing to fill casual vacancies when they arose, each such job would have been one less job that may have to be removed in the future by making a post holder redundant. Removing a job from a list of vacancies is essentially a paper exercise. It is very different from bringing an end to the existing career of an actual person, whose livelihood the job currently provides.

A Conservative budget would have been based on ...
(1) using natural staff turnover to gradually reduce expenditure to within affordable limits and keep it there
(2) reducing unproductive spending
(3) concentrating on front-line services
(4) taking steps to ensure that fairness to all local communities was restored, and once restored, was upheld.

Cllr. Mace's personal response to the City Cabinet’s Budget proposals, based on his comments at Budget Council on 2 March 2011,

The question alleged to have been asked to users of Council Services in the recent consultation was "would you rather pay higher charges or lose the service ?" Consider the case of the Community Pools. The choice was not a real one. The County Council demonstrated last year how its offer to help the City Council would generate more than enough funds from savings and extra income to enable the City to keep the Community Pools open. Sure - accepting the offer was a political decision - but of all political decisions, this was the no-brainer of all no-brainers. The offer was conditional on the City keeping the pools open for Community swimming - so once its benefits to both Councils had been demonstrated, it was never a practical possibility that the pools would have been closed to community use.

The fair question to have asked pool users would have been "Now that the future of the pools has been assured through partnership working with the County Council, would you like to pay higher charges in order to subsidise another of the Council's activities ?" The answer to that question may well have been a different one. "Reduce waste before increasing charges" would have been a short answer that avoided expletives.

It is the same answer that meets questions about hidden taxation contained in increases in charges for the use of the City Council's car parks. Some of the services the City Council provides are discretionary - but that does not stop them being front line services that council tax payers are willing to fund. These services are not trivia, potentially to be cast aside but are front line services that are important to the quality of life for the communities, the residents, and the visitors in our district. If we ask users of the Council's car parks to pay more for their use despite the knock on effect on the viability of commercial and social activities in the urban centre, and if through the mis-named "Wellbeing Fees and Charges", we ask users of the recreational facilities on offer by the City Council that we still own to pay more for their use, why do we not also ask the Dukes Theatre to increase its ticket prices, so that the subsidy can be reduced, or ask the council's landlord to reduce the rent and service charges so the unwelcome subsidy for Lancaster indoor Market can be reduced.

This is a budget which divides our district. It continues to support urban residents at the expense of rural residents. It continues to concentrate services in urban areas and to withdraw from supporting them in rural communities - while failing to reinstate special expenses so that parishes who choose to supply services within their boundaries when the City Council does not provide them there can avoid double taxation on their residents. It continues to support those who are providers of council services, rather than supporting those who use them. It has paid council officers not to work for the council rather than to work for the council - and in describing the salaries of departed employees as "savings", it has effectively insulted them by attaching zero value to the work that they did while the Council employed them, and has disguised in various ways the extent of the true cost to the district for the restructuring that has taken place.

I suspect most of us agree in our heart of hearts that public expenditure has recently been at unsustainable levels and that reductions are necessary. In the interests of our District, it is the Council's job to ensure that cuts are as painless as possible. I am not satisfied that this has been done. Unfortunately, it is in the interests of some politicians to make the cuts bite as hard as possible and to put the blame on the coalition government. Ever an optimist, I hope that last remark doesn't apply to anyone in our City Council.

The Council has wisely decided that the intention to protect the most vulnerable in our society should be a thread that runs through all the priorities in the City's policy framework. In doing so, we all need to remember that hidden taxes are no less painful to those that are affected by them than taxes that are disclosed.