SAFER communities, cleaner streets, a continued drive to help vulnerable people and boost activities for young people are the Kirklees Council Cabinet's key aims.
Those are the main points that Lib-Dem leader Clr Kath Pinnock will be proposing to Wednesday's budget meeting.
She said those key areas of service development - added to other investment in previous years, such as schools and roads - reflected what local communities had said were the important subjects they wanted the council to look at.
Clr Pinnock added: "Things that are important to local people are not always those that mean huge investment.
"While a three-year drive topping £10m investment to provide a range of choices in social services for older people is one end of the spectrum, more modest investments, such as improving public toilets in town centres, is also important to residents.
"For people to know that our town centres are safe for them to visit and have decent, clean and accessible public toilets can be the `make or break' consideration in them deciding whether they come to our town centres.
"It is all about improving the quality life, choice and opportunities.
"The general thrust of the Cabinet's budget is to maintain and continue to improve essential services, while looking for most council services to make 2% efficiency savings.
"Within that, there will be priority areas for improvements and additional spending, principally social services, community safety, environment issues and young people's services, as well as long-established priorities for schools and roads."
Key areas of investment proposed include:
* Cash support to more than double the number of police community support officers across the district
* More CCTV security cameras
* Integrating park wardens' services
* A graffiti-busting team to tackle `all' graffiti
* Projects and activities for young people, such as more centres and recreational facilities
* Paying for projects and measures to clamp down on anti-social behaviour
* Further investment in services for older people
* Continued priority for schools and education
* Improvements to public toilets
* Investment in improvements to town halls, public halls, community centres and parks.
Clr Pinnock said: "As always, the balance we have to achieve is investment in maintaining our essential services, while keeping council tax levels at a price that people can afford.
"I am not the first leader of this council to highlight the dissatisfaction of councils and councillors across the country at the way local government is funded.
"The council tax is a regressive tax that penalises those least able to afford it. I am pleased the council supports the campaign being led nationally by the Local Government Association to find a fairer way of funding councils and local services.
"However, we are stuck with what we've got. The approach of successive governments has been to allocate support grants - the biggest single element of our budget - that have built-in assumptions that councils will raise council tax by levels above the inflation rate, to make up the difference between what the Government allocates in support grants and what is needed to maintain services.
"Under the Cabinet proposals the council's share of the council tax will rise on average by 75p a week, or 4.9%. The overall bill includes charges by the fire and police authorities, over which the council has no control. Their increases of 7.9% and 14.9% will push the weekly average rise to £1, or 5.9%.
"It is very disappointing that after increases of 29% and 17% respectively last year, and 10% and 25% the year before, that those authorities are again planning hefty rises."
She added: "These non-elected bodies impose large percentage year-on-year increases relatively unchecked and camouflage them by them being absorbed in the overall council tax bill."
She said the council tax rises in Kirklees over the last three years had been the lowest of the five main councils in West Yorkshire and below 25 of England's 36 metropolitan councils.
"Our grant support continues to be among the lowest of any council in West Yorkshire, per head of population.
"The Government is saying the needs of Kirklees residents are less than those in other parts of West Yorkshire. We disagree and will fight for a fairer deal."
