The CDU announced this Sunday that it will vote against the Porto City Council Budget and Activities Plan, considering that the document “does not respond to the investment needs” of the city and its population.
In a statement, the PCP/PEV coalition justifies that the document, which will be discussed and voted on in a private meeting of the executive, headed by Rui Moreira, on Monday, “is below the development needs of the city and, in particular, of the necessary response to the deep economic and social crisis that an important part of its population is going through”.
In the text, the CDU also considers that the discussion of the Porto City Council Budget and Activities Plan “has been losing importance, given that, objectively, it is increasingly a document with little adherence to reality.”
The Porto City Council budget for 2023 includes an increase in income of 20.9% compared to 2022, the equivalent of 66.8 million euros, remaining at 385.8 million euros, with a vote scheduled in a private meeting of the city council executive for Monday.
As the CDU explains, the Porto City Council “presents, annually, a management balance (difference between the income collected and the expenses made) of around 80 million euros”, a value “only calculated at the end of the year and that, as a general rule, it motivates a budget review in March” so that “the budget review is, effectively, the true moment of evaluation of what the majority of the municipal council intends to do”.
Regarding the options set out in the document, the CDU points out that “it does not take into account the real situation of the city” in terms of Social Housing, pointing out “the non-use of funds resulting from the protocols established with the Housing Institute and Urban Rehabilitation for the construction of new social housing”.
The PCP-PEV coalition criticizes “the growth, simultaneous to the increase in the human resources of the municipality, of the acquisition of services (…) at the same time that there is a growing and excessive delegation of municipal activity to municipal companies, whose activity It is not supervised by the Municipal Assembly”.
The coalition of communists and greens accuses the Executive of “dragging investments from year to year”, exemplifying with “works that are announced for the immediate future and that, later, are sent to the calendas -in the case, for example, of the construction of a viaduct over VCI, to connect the Botanical Garden with the CDUP stadium, which in the 2021 and 2022 budgets planned to invest 350 thousand euros in 2023 and which, now, refer to 2026”.
The CDU also criticizes the “insistence on the sale of municipal land, at a time when the economic situation of the municipality does not justify it”, the “lack of a clear commitment to the construction of more municipal orchards”, as well as “the the non-existence, after years of neglect, of a requalification project for the S. Sebastião Market”.
However, the CDU recognizes and warns of two situations that it considers to have “a negative impact” on the financial situation of the Chamber: “The process of transferring powers from the Central Administration, specifically in matters of Education, was not accompanied by the transfer of the necessary exercise of funds and the high increases in the cost of fuels are implying, at the level of the STCP (…) and also, at the level of the rest of the municipal fleet, that is, in terms of the collection of solid urban waste”.
“Given this critical assessment of the options proposed in the 2023 Budget, the municipal elected officials of the CDU will vote against, as well as against the program contracts and the modifications to them with the municipal companies that result from it”, concludes the notice. text.
Source: Observadora
