Recent publicity about City of York Council's proposals to tackle the £4 million deficit in their budget beggars belief.

On the one hand they proposed to sell off the DN1 number plate, which might have brought in £40,000. On the other, they propose putting £50,000 towards replacing the Lord Mayor's car and spending £45,000 on employing a second press officer and an officer to explain the new form of cabinet government which is expected to replace the present committee system.

The Citizen, we are informed, cost £100,000 last year and the annual cost of publicity last financial year was "recorded as £1.5 million". Surely the brief of the present press officer should be to talk more closely to the Evening Press to ensure readers know what is being "done on their behalf". Our Evening Press is pretty fair and most of the reporting is objective. The supplements they produce may not be printed on such quality paper as used for The Citizen, but they would surely be much cheaper!

To make further economies, we are told that there will inevitably be job losses. No doubt, as is usually the case, the brunt of these will be borne by the lower-paid workers rather than the increasingly large numbers of managers.

The council now seems to have departments and services for every area of need. Perhaps the council might follow the lead given by its own education department in making cuts and considerable savings at the top levels of management by merging departments and increasing their managers' responsibilities.

Kenneth W Scaife,

Ferguson Way,

Huntington, York.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.