Olivia Delgado explained that she discussed this matter with the president of the Cabildo, Pedro Martin, of whom she highlighted her “commitment” to the municipality after a meeting she attended in her capacity as senator. He recalled that the current island government awarded the new waste management contract “to improve recycling.” Along these lines, he pointed out that “Arico cannot continue to suffer the consequences of waste management that did not penalize burying them, as has been happening for decades of the Canarian Coalition government in the Cabildo.”
The councilor stated that the municipality “must receive the compensation it deserves for the Environmental Complex”, and stressed that the mayor should “sit down to talk” because the tension “gives headlines, but does not solve problems.” Olivia Delgado assured that “the mayor knows perfectly that several agreements cannot be made for the same, because that would be illegal.”
In tune
Words that coincide with the argument of the island government to reject the demand of the Arico tripartite to renew the agreement that compensates the municipality for giving up two million square meters to house the island’s landfill. His counselor Javier Rodríguez explained to the Plenary, in June and last September, that the agreement adopted by the same body (July 2020) cannot be applied to meet the request of the City Council, because a report from the Administrative Waste Service warns that two subsidies for the same concept are not authorized.
The PSOE de Arico presented to the municipal plenary session – last Friday – a proposal in which he asked “to strengthen and organize the Urban Planning area” to take advantage of the “development of the recycling industry in the Environmental Complex and in the municipality.” At the same time, he urged the local government to urgently initiate a file to implement waste collection management “based on minimizing impact and maximizing recycling, opting for separation at source.”
The socialist spokesperson in the Ariquero Consistory also accuses the municipal government of “repeatedly failing to comply with the laws”, because it took 21 months to grant the building license for a plastic recycling plant that will generate about twenty jobs.
The PP joins forces with Arico
On the opposite side is the Popular Party in the Cabildo, which yesterday returned to demand that the Insular Corporation resume negotiations with the City Council to reissue the agreement that compensates Arico for “the diseconomies caused by the location in the southern municipality of the Complex Environmental of Tenerife ». The counselor Valentín González recalled that in 2018 the one that had been in force since 2001 expired and that it is the Ariquero Consistory that requests the island Administration “to update the amounts.” Petition to which he adds that the new agreement includes “the need to invest in areas such as social services, mobility or reductions in the garbage bill.”
Valentín González puts on the table that the agreement of the Plenary of the Cabildo has not been fulfilled, which in June 2020 decides to “promote this agreement” and attributes to the island government “lack of sensitivity, coincidentally, with municipalities that are not of the same political color” , and mentions El Rosario and Los Silos. In his opinion, in addition, the location of the Environmental Complex “definitively conditions the economic development of the municipality of Arico.”
Martínez (PP): «Decide which side you are on»
“You must decide which side you are on, your party or your municipality,” claimed the socialist spokesman Andrés Martínez (PP), councilor for Urbanism. “Political interests cannot be above the welfare of Arico,” he reproached Delgado. The CC spokesman, Juan José Armas, directed his counterpart by indicating that it corresponds to demand the Cabildo, not the municipal government. “If on Thursday there is no will to negotiate, we will have reason to think that they want to leave Arico in the gutter,” said the mayor, Sebastián Martín, before the meeting scheduled for the day after tomorrow between both administrations. He comes “with an outstretched hand”, since “when there is political will, the legal and technical ways are sought, which there are.” However, “seeing certain performances, we have doubts.” The councilor explained that since January there are contacts with the president to discuss this issue.