York’s councillors should all be voted out – Yorkshire Post Letters

LOCAL elections are with us in a few days but is democracy working these days?

I’ll light the blue touch paper. Do we actually need councillors in a city the size of York? The current fall-out, cover up and transparency bypass of a £400,000 payout to the former CEO brings local party politics into disrepute. Is it time to reassess the effectiveness of local government as most council-led projects end up in dismal failure?

In York we remember the Rowntree open-air, Edmund Wilson and Barbican swimming baths. Nothing seems to get done. York Central? Say no more.

If councils are deliberately kept short of money by central government, what room is there to make improvements?

Council-owned properties look tired and neglected. Many need a good painting and have rotten windows. Our roads and pavements are becoming Third World – not helped by 40 skilled council tradespeople who could actually do something to make a difference were made redundant in a previous round of cuts.

Now they’re trying to cut the bin collections down to every month. The system isn’t working.

The City of York, like most places, needs simple, fair financial running – not on party lines – for the benefit of all citizens. Why not abolish all councillors and have an elected management team of directors on four-year contracts to get on with the job – efficiently and responsibly – or face redundancy like everyone else for failure? And with no golden parachutes.

From: Bob Watson, Baildon.

WHAT a load of typical Labour diatribe by MP Rachel Reeves (The Yorkshire Post, May 1), concentrating on sundry bits of trivia ahead of Thursday’s elections.

I suspect that this is of no great consequence to many people, who would prefer the major parties to get on with the hugely difficult task of getting over the worldwide pandemic and putting all efforts into the ways in which the vitally important economic recovery can be masterminded.

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