ANGER has been expressed at a town meeting in Largs about the gravity of proposed council cuts and the impact on children and educational services in the area.
North Ayrshire Council are currently carrying out a consultation into the proposed cuts and have produced a range of options which will be decided upon in February.
However, Largs Community Council have lambasted the options presented, and say that cuts should be made elsewhere in the budget which will not affect children.
Community councillor Jamie Black said: "There is the most appalling suggestion from North Ayrshire Council to use pupil equity funding to put a police officer on the campus.
"Pupil equity funding is designed to close the attainment gap for the poorest and worst performing pupils, and they want to re-align the level of pupil support assistants to save £60,000, and want to abolish school crossing patrols.
"They want to remove the amount of cleaning in schools, and get rid of people in the music service and in the education psychology.
"There is nothing about anything in corporate or anything in other areas, it is all falling on children, and I think we should put forward a motion that we totally oppose it.
"If you look at the jobs that are cut, the vast majority are at the lower end of the payscale which seems ridiculous."
Independent councillor Ian Murdoch made it clear that proposals have not been approved.
Conservative councillor Tom Marshall said: "These are proposals put forward by the SNP administration and Cllr Ian Murdoch and me have not agreed to these cuts.
"The council have got a shortfall next year of £13.8m, and the health and social care partnership has a shortfall of £5.4m.
"I tend to agree with Jamie about the proposals, and there are the ways of doing this - like cutting the administration costs, stop hiring staff, stop doing things which are not necessary by statute as a lot of these cuts are unacceptable such as cutting school crossing patrols.
"It is not a done deal. The council put this into the public domain early so that people could know about it as last year it was kept quiet and it was leaked.
"You can be assured that myself and the Conservative group don't agree to the majority of this.
Cllr Murdoch said " I have warned on several occasions to this meeting that people had no idea what was coming and how horrendous it is.
"The budget proposals haven't come out this early before. And I have asked the question, when do we get to the stage that there is nothing left to cut?"
Cllr Murdoch stated that if an option is opposed, the council will come back asking for an alternative cut.
Cunninghame North MSP Kenneth Gibson pointed out to the meeting that some of the proposals in the council consultation have previously been rejected.
He added that the SNP have 12 councillors out of 33 at North Ayrshire Council and will have to work with political parties and won't be able to impose its will.
He said: "There are ways of raising money, and you can look at management structure if you want, but North Ayrshire Council have a falling school role, and they want to reduce teacher numbers as they don't have enough pupils."
The community council agreed to write to North Ayrshire Council opposing the cuts.
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