Vandals damaging parking meters in Wrexham have left the council with a £160,000 bill.Damaged and vandalised pay and display machines cost Wrexham council £164,000 to repair or replace
Broken and vandalised pay and display machines left the authority with a £164,000 repair tab, and they were also the target of thieves on several occasions.
Meters that are more secure and harder to break are to be introduced around the town, and free parking is being offered in the run up to Christmas to try to boost the number of shoppers coming to the town in the festive period .
Wednesday’s council meeting - which went through the annual accounts of the authority - was told most departments were projecting underspends apart from the environment and planning section, with a fall in prices for recyclable materials partly to blame.
But a report which looked at spending between April and July said part of projected overspend included £195,000 in landfill tax due to the volume of non recyclable waste it has to dump.
Councillor Mike Morris called for a residents’ permit scheme to be introduced at recycling sites, claiming people living outside the county borough could be dumping their rubbish and recyclables without being challenged.
Councillors have requested further information about a deal previously agreed between the council and external consultants paid to help the authority make savings.
They discussed the BBC programme Who’s Spending Britain’s Billions? which looked at fees paid to management consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) hired by a number of councils .
Wrexham finance boss Mark Owen told the meeting a 10% fee - of the savings made - has been agreed in a two-year deal with the consultants.
The authority has previously said it has made £25m in savings in the last three years and it is looking to save a further £5m ahead of agreeing next year’s budget.
http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/parking-meter-vandals-leave-wrexham-12086816
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