TOMORROW I will move the council’s budget for the 10th, and probably final, time.

I will also be moving the formal resolution to set the council tax for the 10th year in a row.

For the last nine years I have moved that there should be no increase in the band D council tax level. Tomorrow will be no different.

What is different is that, if I wanted to, I could move an increase of up to three per cent without the Scottish Government threatening to hit the council with a punitive financial penalty.

My political opponents in the SNP – including Nicola Sturgeon at First Minister’s questions last week – have claimed the reason I am not doing so is because they have given the council so much money that I don’t need to. The truth is somewhat different.

The council’s respected chief financial officer Alan Puckrin has advised councillors that, on a like for like basis, our government grant has been cut by over £4.8m since last year, which is equivalent to a council tax increase of nearly 17 per cent.

Local SNP MSPs Derek Mackay and Stuart McMillan have both criticised me for not planning to increase the council tax by the permitted amount of three per cent, claiming that I have been arguing for the past nine years that the council tax freeze should be lifted.

Unfortunately they have not been listening for those nine years.

My criticism of the council tax freeze was that it was being imposed on councils by government ministers in Edinburgh. For me, locally democratically elected councillors, who are directly accountable to their communities, should take decisions on council tax.

Councillors should have the right to freeze, increase or even decrease the council tax in their areas free from government control.

How would Nicola Sturgeon take to Theresa May telling her that if she raises the Scottish rate of income tax the Scottish Government’s block grant would be cut by Westminster?

A government-imposed council tax cap of three per cent is no less undemocratic than a government-imposed council tax freeze.

Of course the council tax is not being frozen again this year for everyone.

Some 7,000 families in Inverclyde face rises ranging from 7.5 per cent to 22.5. Much as Derek Mackay and Stuart McMillan would want me to, I am not prepared to add to the financial burden on these families by slapping on another three per cent.

The council has more than sufficient reserves to cover the £862,000 a three per cent across the board increase would raise.

While most people seem to accept that the time has come for the council tax to rise, many have been shocked by the size of the increases they face.

Even some SNP supporters, including local bus company boss Ralph Roberts, are unhappy. He told our SNP group leader Chris McEleny on social media that if he put up his fares by the same amount ‘there would be an outcry’.

Council taxpayers across Scotland must be wondering why after demanding a freeze for the last nine years the SNP government thinks an increase of up to 26 per cent in one year is acceptable.

Had they decided to phase the changes for higher banded properties over a period of, say, three years I’m sure that would have been much more palatable.

I don’t know why Nicola Sturgeon and her party did not adopt that approach.

Maybe you can ask them when they come chapping on your door looking for votes over the next 11 weeks?