SO the council tax poll circulars have arrived. What a fiasco! What a waste of taxpayers' money!

The Lib Dem circular, Focus, recently gave us an early indication of the form and content of the poll document and options to be considered.

The most telling statement was to the effect that the council will have the final say - which has been carefully omitted from the official document.

Not only that but, in the small print, the actual costs of this futile exercise are £8,082 for the main document plus £3,320 for the printing of the postcards - and up to £11,223 if 60 per cent of the cards are returned via Freepost.

That's £22,625 for an exercise the council will choose to ignore if they don't like the result!

The options offered don't include a zero increase, only five per cent, 7.5 per cent or ten per cent.

We should remember this is only City of York's portion of the take and doesn't include the police authority, fire authority or parish precepts.

However, on the front page it says "Tell us the council tax option you prefer". I will be saying zero. How about you?

Finally the threats! One of the items which would suffer, if a 7.5 per cent were introduced, would be road maintenance.

Oh really. Have you seen the state of Oaken Grove in Haxby? And it's been like that for years!

Mike Jones,

Elm End, Haxby, York.

Updated: 11:20 Tuesday, December 21, 2004