IT CAN'T be much fun working for a local council these days.

To be fair, it's probably not a barrel of laughs being an elected councillor.

But even in these times of austerity, there is a difference.

Councillors across make decisions that send thousands of council workers to join the dole queue. The councillors, meanwhile, stay in their jobs.

As councils across Wales revealed the next stage in their budget preparations for the 2015/16 financial year this week, the city council in Newport took the brave step of announcing what local people who took part in budget consultations wanted to see cut.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, top of the list came senior council officers and councillors. Voters want to see fewer of the former and they want to spend less money on the latter.

Newport council tax payers also wanted to see their local authority merging with another to save money.

More than 1,000 people took part in Newport's budget consultation, yet the most popular money-saving ideas will not be happening.

Just one of the council's senior management roles is to go - although it would be unfair not to acknowledge that more have gone in the past.

There are no planned changes to councillors' allowances - although the council will quite rightly say such expenditure is set independently and nationally .

And a suggested merger with Monmouthshire council has been rejected by both councils, although others in Gwent (such as Blaenau Gwent and Torfaen) are moving forward on merger plans.

While I agree Newport should remain a stand-alone council, there are other money-saving ideas from the public that should be adopted.

More senior civil servant roles should be merged. Most Gwent councils are situated in such close proximity to each other that having one chief executive for a number of councils makes sense. This could undoubtedly apply to other senior roles.

And while I would not reduce the amount of money paid to councillors - after all, a little over £13,000 a year is not exactly mega-bucks - I would consider reducing their number.

There are 50 councillors in Newport. Some wards have four councillors, some have only one.

If there is to be no merger, that number will remain intact.

It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this column that I think there are too many politicians in Wales.

Council mergers will lead to a natural cull of councillors, but what about those authorities that refuse to merge?

A council like Newport should have two councillors per ward, providing all wards are of equal size in terms of population. That would reduce the number of councillors in the city by around a dozen.

And while the basic saving of around £158,000 that would make is a drop in the ocean for a council that needs to find £10 million in savings, it sends the right message to voters.

It says that councillors are ready to take some of the pain, and it says that the views of voters have been included in the decision-making process.

Councils have struggled for years to find the right way to engage people in their decisions.

Newport has done well to attract more than 1,000 people to give their views on its budget.

But to respond by effectively saying, 'thanks very much for your input, but we're going to do something else', both defeats the object of consultation and also makes it more difficult to engage with voters next time.