The fragility of the coalition, Town Council in Almuñécar was made plain in the last Plenary Meeting, where the Mayor was defeated.
The Mayor, Trinidad Herrera, controls the Town Council thanks to what can only be described as an anti-Benavides arrangement, where the extreme left banded together with the right-wing to keep Benavides out of the Mayor’s office.
A motion to reduce the IBI, municipal property tax, put forward by the CA (Benavides) opposition party was carried thanks to the abstention of a key coalition members.
The Plenary had actually been convoked to approve the refinancing of four existing loans for a total of 21,499,543 euros over a ten year period. The motion was approved meaning that the Town Council would save 1,1978,280 during 2020 and another 2,039,580 euros during 2021 – or at least, that was the plan.
However, the CA presented an amendment motion proposing that the savings should be used to reduce the IBI burden on homeowners during 2020, dropping it by 11.9% so that the percentage levied would be 0.96. The reduction for 2021 would be 12.3% leaving the percentage levied at 0.93%.
According to the CA, “The reason for proposing this reduction was because of the “enormous increase suffered in 2011 when the present Mayor came to office.” Sr. Benavides considers that this 2011 tax hike increased the IBI by 30%.
He also thanked the votes in favour from the PSOE and the abstention by the governing-party coalition partner, Ciudadanos and IU.
Editorial comment: it’s hard to interpret this move as anything other than “top Smartie points” for the opposition because Ciudadanos was obviously very conscious of the general elections on the 10th of next month and the predicted descent of their party all over the nation. Voting against the CA motion could incline locals when they come to cast their votes. As for the IU, they already suspect that there was a good chance that they will be joining the dinosaurs in Extinctionville so to vote against this measure would make a probability into a certainty.
(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)