THEIR respective headquarters are just over 20 miles apart.
But anyone who witnessed the two cabinet meetings held earlier this week in Hull and Beverley might have been left wondering whether our region's two main councils are on the same planet.
In Hull, a palpable sense of tension was in the air.
With most of the proceedings being held behind closed doors, councillors only emerged for the occasional cigarette.
Inside the main cabinet room, a series of service reviews were on the agenda.
Urgency was the order of the day, with the words of City Treasurer Brendan Arnold still fresh in the ears from a hastily-scheduled pre-cabinet scrutiny committee earlier that morning.
At scrutiny, he had delivered an update on the likely savings required to be made by the council over the next two years.
Instead of the previous £40m estimate, the revised figure now stood at £46m.
"If correct, it is dismal news," announced Mr Arnold gravely.
Within a few hours, the biggest changes in a generation at the Guildhall were being put into action, with proposals to create new council- owned companies to run leisure and Streetscene services getting the nod.
The former was agreed, along with the closure of swimming facilities at Ennerdale Leisure Centre and the council-run Springhead golf course in west Hull, to generate savings.
Immediately afterwards, portfolio holder Councillor Terry Geraghty spoke optimistically about the new not-for-profit company being able to attract new funding and even spearheading a combined new ice rink and swimming complex in the city centre.
A potential site in Spring Street, behind St Stephen's shopping centre, has even been identified.
But minutes from the meeting subsequently published by the council reveal that other existing leisure facilities could eventually close to help pay for it.
While approval to borrow up to £9m to help fund the project was sanctioned by councillors, the minutes show they also agreed to consider "making savings from the configuration of current sites" once the new city centre facility is open for business.
Sources say the leisure company idea was unveiled without warning by Cllr Geraghty at the cabinet meeting, leaving some senior officers openly alarmed at being left out of the loop.
Elsewhere, approval was also given for a number of services currently provided to schools by the council to be axed next year.
All this just a week after the go-ahead was given to effectively transfer the council's adult social care services to either a social enterprise or a community interest company.
Council leader Steve Brady believes the authority has little choice but to reinvent itself in the face of continuing funding cuts.
By 2015, he estimated the council will have lost about £100m in core revenue funding from the Government over a five-year period.
"We believe that setting up these wholly-owned council companies is the best way to maintain the services that people really need and appreciate, while giving us the opportunity to attract new funding that might not have been available if they remained as departments within the council," said Councillor Brady.
"None of us take any pleasure in working under the kind of budget restraints we are seeing at the moment, but we have to."
Meanwhile, his counterpart at County Hall in Beverley was presiding over an altogether happier gathering of his cabinet.
East Riding Council leader Stephen Parnaby and his colleagues were hearing the authority had achieved a £14.2m under-spend on its main revenue budget in 2012-13.
The equivalent figure in Hull was recently confirmed as £1.4m.
As a result, some of the money from the East Riding under-spend is now being reallocated to be spent on service areas such as highways repairs and flood prevention work.
"East Riding Council has not been treated differently in terms of Government funding reductions," said Councillor Parnaby. "But through planning ahead and robust financial management, we have been able to manage the consequences much better than other local authorities.
"I know some local authorities not far from here would probably kill to be in the sort of position we are."
Without mentioning Hull by name, the comparisons are inevitable.
There are no moves to set up arms-length council companies in the East Riding, no potentially large reductions in staff numbers and no torturous negotiations with trades unions over cost-saving cuts to staff terms and conditions.
The latter actually happened when the East Riding was first created back in the mid-1990s, heading off the kind of upheaval now being played out in Hull.
In recent months, Cllr Parnaby has also been able to announce big investments in council-run leisure centres in Haltemprice and Bridlington, while deftly allowing responsibility for the more financially-challenging Floral Hall in Hornsea to be transferred to a community group in the town.
True, the East Riding is still only halfway through its own transformation programme, aiming to achieve permanent savings of £27m by doing things differently.
But it has already identified £12.1m worth of savings towards that target, with staff redeployment into new roles being the favoured method to reduce numbers if and when posts are axed.
For Cllr Parnaby, the ability of the council to pump extra money into highways repairs as the funding squeeze from Whitehall continues remains a source of pride.
"The planned under-spend over the past 12 months is very commendable and further evidence of this authority's prudent financial management," he said.
"Road maintenance remains a significant pressure because of the size of the network in the East Riding and the continuing impact of the severe winter weather in recent years.
"It is also one of the top priorities identified by our residents through budget consultations and it is good that the council can respond so positively."
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