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meet with us in mid-February. At that meeting, we will discuss those opinions with him. Furthermore, I suggest to invite the Chief Executive for discussions with us 41 Councillors. About this, I hope the Chairman will lead us as soon as possible to deal with the Urban Council's transition. What I am talking about is not one's political future but the entire issue of the Urban Council's transition. I hope that we will all be broad-minded, that is, we should fight for the transition of the entire Urban Council, and our goal is to continue to serve the public. The survival of one's political future is but of secondary importance.
The second example is our five-year plans. In July, 1995, the Council passed the motion for the five-year plans. It has been one and a half years. Let us examine the progress of the five-year plans of the 10-odd Select Committees. I can only think of three Select Committees, namely, the Culture Select Committee, the Recreation Select Committee, and the Libraries Select Committee whose five-year plans indicate actual and gradual progress. As for the other Select Committees, it can be said that their five-year plans have yet to start. If an organisation whose annual expenditure is as high as seven billion dollars does not have a five-year plan to determine its direction and only has short-term annual plans for work, then I would doubt if the public could have confidence in us. Now, not even the Government has confidence in us. This matter also involves the discussions for fund allocation held every three years.
How did we handle the discussions for fund allocation? Before the entire Council discussed fund allocation in detail and formulated a strategic standpoint, a small group comprising four or five people went for negotiations with the Government. The Government felt that the amount of 22.5 billion dollars we asked for was too large. They said they could only allocate us 18.7 billion dollars. As there was a difference of 3.8 billion dollars, the Council started discussions anew with the Government. What was most laughable was that it turned out that the Urban Council, the Urban Services Department, and the Government all interpreted the formula for fund allocation differently. Each party said that the other parties had different views, and they were back to square one. Then, we requested new negotiations with the Government. It is now that we are finally considering the idea of forming a small group to discuss the strategies to adopt.
From these three examples, we can see that we have lost a great deal of time, that we do not have a base for advance or retreat, and that we lack strategy and do not have a direction. If one says that the Urban Council, a massive organisation that spends seven billion dollars in public funds per year does not have a five-year plan, that it only follows the short-term direction decided each year, and that it has 14 horse-drawn carriages all pulling in a different direction and yet hopes to achieve the goal of serving the public, then I would surely disagree.
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