We know; it’s enough to make you weep, but the City Hall of Granada has only received about a fifth of what it hoped to grab through fines. As this was a projected “income” in the 2012 budget, they are having trouble with the books.

The prevision for 2012 was a meager 14m euros, but with only this month to complete the fourth quarter, the City Hall has ‘only’ seen 2.4m euros. It’s not been because the police have not been out there fining to their heart’s content, because 5.6m euros worth of fines have been issued, so there is still another 3.2m euros out there to be collected.

For the opposition, using fines as a source of income when setting a budget year is simply not realistic, principally because the municipal tax office is not going about it the right way. The said councillor, Baldomero Oliver, says that there are around 50 members of staff in the office whose function it is get that money in, but they are not managing it.

There are several reasons that the funds from fines are not coming in: people are appealing against them because they are not signed by policemen, but by private companies running the blue zones – by law it has to be a public official, otherwise it is one citizens word against another.

Another reason is because people are worse off and not using their cars so much, and finally, says, Sr. Oliver, because the fines are not being electronically register correctly.

During both 2011 and 2012 the prevision for fines income was 14m euros, but despite the obvious gap between prevision and reality, the 2013 section of the budget for this ‘income’ is 13.2m euros… somebody is not getting the message, evidently.

The whole thing is beginning to snowball, because at the end of 2011, there was an outstanding deficit of 18.5m euros in this sector  of the budget, which will now be increased by the 2012 deficit. The City Hall accountant says that it is imperative that the outstanding debts that go back to 2007 be ‘liquidated’.

(News: Metropolitan Granada, Granada, Andalucia)