Councils have been told to expect to see their budgets cut even further in the future.

If you speak to someone, anyone, working on the front line of the services affected, like home care, social work or cleansing they will tell you they don’t see how that is possible.

Year after year, budgets have been cut and the City Treasurer at the council, responsible for allocating the money, finds they do not have enough to cover the already diminishing services.

READ NEXT how Glasgow faced a £49m spending gap this year

So, more has to go.

In the last decade, Glasgow has seen half a billion wiped from its budget as services were cut to the bone.

We are, in some departments, looking at a skeleton service and now the only option is to start removing bones.

At that point, the whole structure is in danger of collapse.

The Accounts Commission said councils had to “radically change” how it collaborates with others to survive this never-ending budget onslaught.

READ NEXT: how councils were told to change or face more cuts: Dire financial warning for councils

Perhaps another answer is for these services to be properly funded. That would be a “radical change”.

For years the Scottish Government has cut the money for local authorities while using numbers on spreadsheets and smoke and mirrors to claim it has actually made more available.

The question then is, if more money was made available, then why have services been cut by so much?

If statistical gymnastics was a sport, we’d have world-class competitors. Then again, they’d probably cut their own grassroots funding.

Why is it the services that are relied upon by the most vulnerable and often the poorest in society that face the brunt of the cuts?

The Accounts Commission report noted four areas that were at the highest risk.

They were social care, homelessness, environmental and culture and leisure.

It is the elderly and disabled people who rely the most on council social care services and it is not an exaggeration to say they are a lifeline.

The report said social care was in “crisis”.

People facing homelessness are experiencing probably the most difficult time in their lives.

Environmental services include cleansing which we all rely on as we saw, and smelled, and what happens when it’s not there during a strike last year.

And culture and leisure include vital community services like libraries and community halls.

READ NEXT: Council services at crisis point

These services are valued by the people who need them, who without them life would be so much worse and, in some cases, impossible.

The fact they are described by an independent organisation as “in crisis” tells us they are not valued in the same way by the people making the decisions about their future viability.

There is a chain of decision making and there is responsibility at each level, and, perversely, it increases the further away from communities you get.

The council has to allocate what it gets and is hamstrung by ring-fenced funding to be spent on priorities decided by the Scottish Government with limited powers to raise its own cash.

In budget after budget, the Scottish Government has prioritised other services above local authorities.

These decisions have had serious implications in the communities of Glasgow.

The Scottish Government, when challenged, more often than not says it is at the mercy of spending decisions and grant allocations from the UK Government and its austerity obsession.

It would be fair to say Rishi Sunak and his predecessors as both prime minister and chancellor are not dependent on public services in the way others are.

We could expect, because they keep telling us they are, that Scottish Government ministers are more in touch with people and communities than ministers at Westminster are.

So, it was revealing and disappointing to many that recently the new First Minister, Humza Yousaf, suggested that a pilot of extending universal free school meal entitlement to secondary schools was not the best use of money.

The Scottish Government later said it would in fact be going ahead with the pilot.

But the First Minister had revealed his thinking and the reason given by Humza Yousaf for his thinking was that someone like his 14-year-old daughter should not get free school meals when he is on a First Minister’s salary.

Humza Yousaf’s salary is now in excess of £150,000.

Of course, his family can afford to pay for school meals, but the threshold is far lower.

If the Scottish Government was to follow Humza Yousaf’s instincts, it would be denying people on a fraction of his salary the help that could make a huge difference.

There is to be a “New Deal” for councils being worked on by the Scottish Government and Cosla, representing the country’s 32 local authorities.

It mentions more long-term planning, transparency, and reduced ring fencing but not crucially any commitment to give more money.

In these discussions, the council leaders have to make clear the absolute vital importance of the services that are being destroyed.

And the ministers holding the money have to listen and more importantly understand what they are being told.