The ideal thing would be to start off on a positive note, but why break a habit of a lifetime, eh? Seriously though, the best place to start off is on the most important note – the one that will have most repercussions: the municipal budget.
On the morning of the 21st of May, a plenary meeting of the Town Council met in the Casa de la Cultura to, amongst other things, approve the 2010 budget. The governing party found itself completely alone and consequently the proposed 45-million budget was not passed… again.
This was when the Mayor went for Plan B, which had worked on a previous occasion, back in 2004, to be exact. He convoked a second plenary that same day, but in the afternoon, and put into place a mechanism that would approve the budget, automatically if within one month the opposition did not bring about a vote of no confidence. In other words, the opposition either removed him as mayor via a vote of no confidence, or in the absence of which will be taken as a vote of approval for the budget. But this is not 2004, but rather, a storm-lashed 2010.
You see, even the PP, voted against the Mayor. This is very indicative because they normally let the Mayor have his way by either voting in favour of his party or by abstaining, thus denying the rest of the opposition parties the majority. What had annoyed the PP was that the Mayor presented a budget without consulting anybody and giving such short notice that nobody had time to study the budget proposal before voting on it.
“The budget is tailor made for him, so let him approve it, using the legal mechanism to do so, but he will not have it approved with our votes in favour,” complained the PP leader, Trinidad Herrera.
The PSOE leader, Francisco Prado gave his reasons for not voting in favour, amongst them not having sufficient time to study the proposals. Another concern expressed was that there was too much spending, especially as municipal income had dropped considerably. Sr. Prados considers that there are already too many businesses and suppliers hammering on the Town Hall door, demanding to be paid for the goods and services.
The IU (Fermín Tejero) and the PA (Luis Aragón), which was the Mayor’s old party, were more damning in their evaluation. According to Sr. Aragón the proposed budget was ‘unreal, anti-social and illegal.’ He slammed the provisions for funds for protocol, propaganda and the Peña Escrita mountain park.
The most interesting motion came from Sr. Tejero, who suggested that the Mayor should take a cut in salary from 80,000 euros per annum to 50,000 euros and all the Councillors should suffer a similar wage drop from 53,000 to 40,000 euros. He backed this second blow to the Councillors by pointing out that a worker with university qualifications earns less than they do and when you take into consideration the academic qualifications of Almuñécar’s councillors – or better said the lack of them – the proposed 40,000-euros salary is particularly generous.
Furthermore, he proposed that a number of political appointments, drawing salaries, should be reduced. At present there are eight: the Mayor’s party has five and the PP and PSOE have three between them. These individuals cost the town 295,000 euros a year and by applying the said reductions could be reduced to 200,000 euros.
Similarly, he suggested that unnecessary town hall posts should be abolished, amongst the Coordinador del PSOE, the Defensora del Ciudadano and the Responsable de Tourism (the Mayor’s wife).
Strangely enough, this motion was rejected by the Mayor, the PP and the PSOE.
No, the PP and PSOE preferred to back the PP motion for Councillors to receive the same wage drop as functionaries (public workers) ordered by the Central Government, which, as you can imagine, would not be so unpleasant, even though the IU’s motion would have brought much more relief to the municipal coffers. *Sigh!*