Local Authority Budgets

ballyrhy86

I'm looking for a little help deciphering Local Authority Budgets. See below the 2010 Local Authority Budgets Summary:



I think I've most of them figured out but there are a few columns I'm wondering about.

What does the Pension Related Deductions column mean? Where is this money coming from?

Where/who are the General Purpose Grants coming from?

What does Commercial Rates to be levied mean (rent due?)?

Does Net Effective Valuation refer to assets? And what is the Annual Rate on valuation?

Apologies if this is the wrong forum, feel free to move. Thanks for your help!

Edit: Link to full document

Paulzx

Pension related deductions are the Pension Levy deducted from the staff.

As far as i'm aware this does not include the Superannuation contributions

Victor

ballyrhy86 wrote: »

I'm looking for a little help deciphering Local Authority Budgets. See below the 2010 Local Authority Budgets Summary:

http://img.ie/images/5882a_thumb.jpg

Note that only covers county councils. Town and city councils appear not to be included. There appears to be mistakes in those numbers - note the variation in the Net Effective Valuations. This may be down to out of date valuations (an 1842 base line was originally used) or some of hte numbers are expressed in "€,000" not "€". However, once the same basis is used throughout the council area, this doesn't matter.

What does the Pension Related Deductions column mean? Where is this money coming from?

The council is responsible for paying the pensions of its former employees and will in future be responsible for paying the pensions of current employees. It needs to set aside money for this, though deductions from employee pay and their own resources. Generally, it is the employer who is responsible for amking sure the pension fund maintains sufficient funds and needs to make up for any losses. I imagine this column refers specificly to the deductions from employee pay. I'm not sure if it is the same or not to the pension levy.

Where/who are the General Purpose Grants coming from?

The Local Government Fund / Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. The other column for "Government Grants / Subsidies" probably refers to grants from government departments and agencies, e.g. the NRA (and the EU?) for specific programmes.

What does Commercial Rates to be levied mean (rent due?)?

This is the amount that the council needs to make from rates (property taxes on business). It is the difference between expected expenditure and income from the sources on the left hand side of the page.

Does Net Effective Valuation refer to assets?

This the value of property assets of the businesses on which rates are charged. Non-property assets are not included.

And what is the Annual Rate on valuation?

This is the amount of income needed by the council divided by the amount of property assets held by business. It should be expressed as "€/€" not "€".

For Carlow:

Income (excluding rates): 17,152,500 + 8,774,100 + 3,347,300 + 10,631,000 +700,000 = 40,604,900

49,534,470 - (40,604,900 + 3,588,070 + 0 + 0) = 5,341,500

5,341,500 / 79,558 = 67.14

ballyrhy86

Excellent, thanks very much folks, much appreciated!

Victor what do you mean by mistakes?

The town and city councils are included in the original document, as well as borough councils.

Victor

Carlow is listed as having rateable assets of €79,000 - thats the quivalent of one small shop in the entire county at present day values.

I suspect it is meant to be €79m or alternatively, they are still using an old valuation base.

ballyrhy86

Victor wrote: »

Carlow is listed as having rateable assets of €79,000 - thats the quivalent of one small shop in the entire county at present day values.

I suspect it is meant to be €79m or alternatively, they are still using an old valuation base.

Yeah that is strange. I might ask someone about that, god knows who though!

Here an example of what I'm up to anyway (college project):



I'm hoping to put a good bit of the data from the Local Authority Budgets up online so people can make their own maps, relate Local Authority spending to income levels, compare spending on education in various Local Authorities etc etc.

Thanks for your help.

Victor

You need to reduce the granularity of the colour scale - 20 categories is too many, when you only have 34 pieces of data.

Category limits should probably be rounded off and at equal intervals, e.g. 1000-1100, 1100-1200, 1200-1300, etc. things like 1019-1026 aren't easy to appreciate and it is difficult to tell one red from another.

10-12 (x100) categories are probably enough, although you could reduce it to 5-6 (x200).

Note - you need to say whether its is all expenditute or current (i.e. excluding capital) expenditure only.

Your map is out of date - Limerick City has included alll of Limerick county north of hte Shannon since 2008(?). The two councils are int eh process of being merged.

In your project, you might comment on why you think there are diferences, e.g. the urban-rural divide.

ardmacha

You need to reduce the granularity of the colour scale - 20 categories is too many, when you only have 34 pieces of data.

Category limits should probably be rounded off and at equal intervals, e.g. 1000-1100, 1100-1200, 1200-1300, etc. things like 1019-1026 aren't easy to appreciate and it is difficult to tell one red from another.

10-12 (x100) categories are probably enough, although you could reduce it to 5-6 (x200)

.

+1 on the category boundaries and the range of the choropleth map.

Also be sure that the county expenditure properly includes urban areas within that county. Louth, for instance, has two large urban areas, Dundalk and Drogheda that have a large part of the county population.

There are some good examples of local government "portals" in the US.

woodoo

Pension related deductions = pension levy. Actual pension contributions are separate from that.

Victor

You might look at this to see how the local government fund is distributed: http://www.environ.ie/en/Publications/LocalGovernment/Administration/FileDownLoad,21130,en.pdf

ballyrhy86

In case anyone is interested, here is the final outcome of the college project: http://irishlocalauthoritybudgets.com/

The write-up is due in shortly, let me know if you think there are any last minute improvements that can be made!