Council Debt - Easy Answers

The practice of submitting questions to Council meetings to be answered by Convenors has been around for a while. We introduced it in 2003, I think. Normally opposition members seek to elicit information that they hope will be useful in debate or is pertinent to a local issue. When an Administration Councillor asks a question it can be assumed that it has been "planted" to give the Convenor the opportunity to showboat or prove a point. Therefore I was intrigued to see a question submitted to today's Council meeting from Cllr Tim McKay, LibDem colleague of Phil Wheeler, Convenor of Finance, about Council debt. the question and answer are as follows -
 

QUESTION

What assurance can the Convener give that the Council’s current level of

indebtedness is reasonable and manageable?

ANSWER

Council sets its capital expenditure plans in accordance with the prudential 

code, a framework introduced by CIPFA in 2004-05. The objectives of the 

prudential code are to provide a framework for local authority capital finance 

that will ensure for individual local authorities that:

1. capital expenditure plans are affordable;
2. all external borrowing and other long-term liabilities are within prudent and 
   sustainable levels; and
3. treasury management decisions are taken in accordance with professional
   good practice.

Oh well, that's okay then. £1.5bn of debt, which costs £110m / year (every year) to service, and growing by the day. That's £3000 of debt for every man, woman and child in Edinburgh, the highest in Scotland, dealt with by 3 bullet points. No figures (perhaps for obvious reasons) no analysis or projections, just "Trust us, we know what we're doing".

Why am I not reassured ?