Under the new IBI system, anyone that has a second home in Salobreña – and we’re talking about 8,000 second-home owners – will see their IBI contributions go up by 90%. But – and this is a big ‘but’ – Salobreña has the lowest IBI rates on the coast. In fact, people pay higher municipal vehicle tax than they do property tax.
The reason for this is that the town uses the 1996 property valuation data. Consequently, somebody who has a flat in Salomar 2000, right there on the beach front, will only pay 99 euros IBI because his property is only valued at 15,273 euros. Someone that has a chalet up on Monte de los Almendros, sitting on a sizeable plot of land, will see his IBI contribution rise from 485 euros to 838… a year, or in other words, just under 70 euros a month. These figures, by the way, were provided by the Consejal de Hacienda – they’re not ours.
In practice, everybody will get charged at the 1.10% rate instead of the hitherto .65% rate, but what will happen is that the Town Hall will apply a ‘grant’ to anybody that is an official resident of Salobreña; i.e., is on the empadronamiento list, which will bring the contribution back down to .65%.
There is one catch, though, for official residents; if they owe any outstanding sums to the Town Hall, they will not be entitled to that ‘discount.’
So why this controversial decision? Quite simple, the Town Hall coffers are running dry, because it hasn’t received a cent in building licences in the last 18 months. In 2007, the Town Hall budget counted on an income of 22 million euros, whereas for 2009 it was only 14m euros. Next year, it is feared that it will only be ten million. The Town Hall is desperate to get money from any possible source, which is why they have installed a Blue Zone parking system along the beach front (calculated to earn 20,000 euros); why they are charging mobile telephone operators for operating within the municipality (54,000 euros) and banks for their cash-point machines (10,000 euros) and finally ‘los vados’ (reserved entrances for private garages.) All told, together with the new IBI, the town hopes to rake in 1.8 million euros
And now for the opposition’s point of view: If the present governing party had wanted money, they should have got their fingers out and started charging IBI on new buildings. The PSOE claims there are many such dwellings that have escaped the IBI register since the year 2000, but no retrospective payment can be demanded after four years. The PSOE calculates that the governing PP has lost 600,000 euros thanks to this negligence.
But the overriding question to this whole affair is how much is this thinly disguised targeting of outsiders going to hurt a town that relies on tourism to survive? The Mayor’s comments are being put up on the mantelpiece for display, along with the Mayor of Almuñécar’s devastating comment to the effect of: If you don’t like it, go somewhere else.
Strangely enough, although the PSOE is very vociferous in their demands for Avelino Menéndez to be removed from the Mancomunidad de la Costa Tropical for his ‘anti-tourist’ comments, they seem oddly quiet about Sr. Benavides comments – could it be that a political pact elsewhere requires them not to rock the boat?
