Council meeting to discuss budget for 2022

MAYO County Council's annual budget meeting gets underway this afternoon (Monday).

The draft budget sets out expenditure of €163,892,081 for 2022, funded as follows: receipts €106,368,372, Local Property Tax €20,856,905, and rates on commercial and industrial property €36,666,804.

A report circulated to members ahead of the meeting sets out that there is no proposed increase in the annual rate on valuation for 2022 and due to the provisions of the general rates revaluation there will be no increase permitted in the ARV for the 2023 budget.

The overall approach has been to maintain budget provision in all key service areas, in so far as is possible. In addition there have been additional modest budget increases in a number of areas including housing adaptation and mobility aid grants and housing aid for older persons €100,000, street cleaning and bin emptying €75,000, management and maintenance of beaches €50,000, maintenance and upgrade of playgrounds and MUGAs €40,000, taking in charge of housing estates €50,000, and provision has also been made for an additional staff member to assist in the progression of work on derelict sites.

Chief executive Kevin Kelly noted that despite the challenges of the past year, a lot has been achieved, services continued to be delivered and projects continued to advance.

“I hope that the Covid scenario in 2022 is more benign so that we can resume normal operations to the maximum extent possible,” he added in his report.

The preparation of the draft annual budget had been 'challenging' but, he said, the proposed expenditure of €163.89m together with the capital programme spend represented a very considerable investment of monies in the development of the county and the delivery of services throughout the county.