STEVE FINAN: Don’t just expand Dundee, merge city council with Angus.

A merger of Dundee and Angus would result in a single chief executive. Today marks my three-year anniversary of writing this column. Thank you for the congratulations.

In my first column, as well as on the first and second anniversaries, I argued that Dundee’s boundaries were too firmly drawn. They still are. They choke Dundee and limit the city’s possibilities. Anyone who repeats the “Goldilocks city” bullshit – not too big, nor too small – lacks ambition.

We still have the absurd scenario of Angus Council emptying dumpsters on one side of a street in Monifieth while Dundee City Council sends a lorry to do the opposite.

Invergowrie continues to pay council tax to Perth & Kinross Council headquarters, which is 18 miles away, but Dundee is only 18 yards away across Riverside Avenue.

These gerrymandered boundaries were drawn in 1996 with the aim that Tory-voting Invergowrie and Monifieth would support Tory governments in Perth and Forfar.

The existing system has to be altered. redraw the boundaries. Make larger but fewer wards. For example, merging Dundee and Angus would result in a single chief executive.

Instead of having all of these positions duplicated 13.9 miles apart, there would be one council officer in charge of development, one for education, corporate services, children and families, and education.

This would be an opportunity to compel Dundee CEO Gregory Colgan, who is continually chastised for his poor performance in information sharing, and Angus CEO Kathryn Lindsay to compete for a single position.

Colgan and Lindsay, I remind you, are paid £180k and £145k per year, respectively. The majority of their department heads earn more than £100,000 annually. This bill to taxpayers would be reduced by half, saving at least £1 million.

They have duplicate departments. That pay expense might be cut in half, saving tens of millions.

Merging Dundee and Angus councils would save millions

Enough to keep Caird Park Golf Course and Broughty Castle operating for several decades.

With plenty left over to help stop coastal erosion in Montrose and keep Brechin safe from flooding. If this were the commercial sector, the job duplication would be easily identified.

Any proper examination of efficiency and best practice, which everyone in every other job undergoes on a regular basis, would demolish the current setup. Why should it be done now? Because the world has changed dramatically since this system was developed.

Modern communications allow for distant meetings, shared systems, and real-time monitoring of many locations.

In the digital age, we still have analogue councils. In England (though they appear to be botching the process), there are plans to consolidate scores of local and district councils in the most significant shake-up of local government in 50 years.

Why not here? And in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire? East and west Dunbartonshire? The three-council oddity in North, South, and East Ayrshire?I will tell you why. Because it would require local leaders to endorse and advocate for it.

But they won’t because they fear losing their seat or their party’s authority on their little council. There isn’t a single councillor in Dundee, Perth & Kinross, or Angus who supports merging councils or declares, “I want to do what’s best for council tax payers”.

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