A row has broken out over West Dunbartonshire Council’s plans to splurge £24,000 on an oil painting while proposing to make millions of pounds of cuts to services.
The local authority looking to splash out on “Evelick” - a painting by Scottish artist Alison Watt - which has a price tag of £24,000 excluding VAT.
The Labour group has reacted with fury over the plans, with leader Martin Rooney commenting: “I’m absolutely appalled that the SNP council are giving this serious consideration.
“Everybody knows that West Dunbartonshire has some of the worst areas of deprivation in Scotland, child poverty was already on the rise, life chances for our young people are below the national average, we have families struggling to buy food, pensioners who are facing sky-high fuel bills, demand for help from foodbanks is increasing as donations are squeezed.
“The real matter of urgency in our area is the cost of living crisis but the SNP council priority is to spend almost £28,000 on an oil painting that will be locked away in a cupboard.
“How can the SNP justify this? It’s absurd at the best of times but completely bonkers in the middle of a cost of living crisis.”
A meeting of the council’s cultural committee was scheduled to take place last week when it was expected that the acquisition of the painting would be discussed.
An email had been sent to councillors about an “urgent item of business” which was “at the request” of chair Baillie Denis Agnew.
Attached was an image of the oil painting.
The meeting was however unable to proceed due to a lack of voting members. They are now set to meet on Friday.
This week, we reported how axing lollipop patollers, cutting back street cleaning and switching to three-weekly bin collections are all options being considered to save cash as West Dunbartonshire Council faces a funding gap.
Reducing the number of pupils who qualify for school travel, charging for brown bin collections and cancelling fireworks displays and Christmas lights switch-ons have also been suggested on a list of 47 cuts presented to councillors last week.
A council spokeswoman said: “In March 2018 the council agreed to create a £4m Cultural Capital Fund to invest in West Dunbartonshire’s cultural and heritage infrastructure.
“From this, £100,000 was committed to establish an Acquisition Fund to purchase fine art works with a particular emphasis on works by Scottish women artists.”
