“Today is an important day for Orihuela.” This is how the mayor of Orihuela, Pepe Vegara , described the budget plenary session that was held on Monday morning at the Palace of the Marquis of Arneva.
It was voted through by PP and Vox, with the unanimous rejection of the opposition, the first municipal accounts since 2018.
The budget amounts to 140 million euros, of which 98 correspond to current spending and 42 to investments. The municipal accounts lack this amount for investments, so they will be financed through bank loans that, as the municipal spokesperson of the PP, Víctor Valverde, has confirmed, will put the Council in debt for 15 years.
This extraordinary plenary session has become, therefore, the most important mandate managed by PP and Vox that began last June. The applause and congratulations among the members of the government after the plenary session concluded clearly demonstrated this.
However, Vegara did not take the reins of the plenary session as mayor and councillor for Economic Affairs. It was the spokesperson for the PP, Víctor Valverde, who explained the accounts, whose framing has been “very complicated” due to the effort necessary to update accounts that have been extended for almost six years.
In this time, income has barely increased 10%, while spending has skyrocketed by at least 50%. As an example, Valverde explained that spending on energy alone has gone from 2.2 million euros annually to six million. However, the lack of any explanation by Vegara was criticised by all opposition groups, who they accused of “hiding in such important matters”.
Therefore, the PP and Vox government team will ask the banks for 41 million euros in support of the budget, which will be added to the 2.1 million of current municipal debt, “inherited from the government of Mónica Lorente “. This amount will be used to undertake the main projects announced by the government team for 2024, such as the walkway over the AP-7 in Orihuela Costa, the coastal civic centre, the rehabilitation of the Oriol Occupational Centre and the urbanisation of the AVE station.
Vox spokesperson, Manuel Mestre, defended the work of the municipal coalition, since “in nine months we have approved budgets that others (pointing to Ciudadanos) have been unable to approve in six years of government.” Mestre highlighted the effort to update the accounts, for which “electoral promises have been delayed and projects have been postponed, since dialogue and the general interest of Orihuela have prevailed over political interests.”
The opposition has objected to these accounts, firstly, for the debt it will mean for the City Council and, secondly, for having been approved with the signature of an accidental auditor appointed by the Mayor’s Office and not by the municipal auditor, “who rejected them until on two occasions,” said Cambiemos Orihuela councillor Enrique Montero.
Montero, who also criticised that the City Council, saying that it “does not have the capacity to launch the 140 construction projects.”
“investment” that these budgets contemplate”. The fact that such a high volume of investment is collected means that for Cambiemos “a budget has been designed to be extended for the next four years”, shielding a series of projects in case “they break down.” the PP-Vox alliance, putting the strength of the coalition to the test.
José Aix of Ciudadanos said that the council has been raised fees and taxes such as construction and the “catastrazo” on the coast “when they said they would make life easier for people. With these increases what they do is make it even more difficult for families to come to Orihuela.”
The PSOE focused its criticism on the debt that the investments will bring to the City Council, since they will mortgage the City Council for the next 15 years. “It is a very expensive inheritance from a far-right government in Orihuela ,” said the socialist spokesperson, Carolina Gracia , who criticised the fact that “projects underway, such as those still to be executed through the EDUSI, are still not even halfway to completion.
The budget will now be submitted to public information before their final approval. The government proposes the end of May as the date for the municipal accounts to come into effect. Only then can the different projects begin to get underway.
The Department of Contracting must then put each of these investments out to tender, so many of them are extremely unlikely to be seen this year, even though they are contemplated in the 2024 budget.
