The municipal spokesperson for the PP in Güímar, Carmen Luisa Castrodismisses as “unjustified and immoral” the increase in spending on salaries of the municipal government and its trusted personnel, approved this week in the Plenary Session of the City Council with the votes of CC, PSOE and United Yes We Can (USP), and for which the Güimarera population will have to face at least half a million euros more in the next 4 years with the payment of their taxes. The mayor will earn 58,080 gross euros and the rest of the councilors between 46,000 and 46,500 gross per year, 10,000 more gross per year than up to now.
The estimate of this cost for the pockets of the neighbors is easy to calculate. Nine councilors will cost 10,000 euros more per month, which makes 360,000 euros in the four-year period; to which must be added 116,000 euros from the new position of trust (29,000 gross per month); and the greater expense in allowances of two councilors in Governing Boards (at a rate of 166 more for each session for each one and taking into account that there are months in which four meetings are held).
“How much could be done in social services, in tax rebates for SMEs, in grants for entrepreneurs, in scholarships, in promoting employmentunder construction… with that money?“asks the former mayor, who estimates that the amount that each inhabitant of Güímar must put up to pay for this extra expense exceeds 20 euros.
Luisi Castro, clear winner of the elections of last May 28 with almost 40% of the votes, considers “surreal” the explanations that the tripartite government has given for such a salary increase, such as that Güímar already has more than 20,000 inhabitants and the regulations now allow a cap higher salaries (in addition to a larger municipal corporation) or the responsibility that government areas entail and even that the majority of governing councilors have a profession in which they earned more outside the policy. “Mere excuses to charge more,” emphasizes the popular leader.
The “incoherence” of United Yes We Can
It strongly calls the attention of the Güimarero PP that a political formation such as Unidas Sí Podemos (made up of Izquierda Unida, Sí se puede and Podemos) has lent itself to “this disproportionate rise in salaries, after all that they have attacked this type of behavior in politics, to the point that they have tried to give moral lessons to the other parties”.
Faced with criticism from the PP councillors, the only response from the USP representative is that she had to “give in” to her government partners even though she was not in favor of increasing this spending; but the reality, underlines Luisi castro, is that she did not hesitate to raise her hand to vote in favor of this proposal in plenary, displaying a “striking incoherence”.
“Nor is it any consolation for taxpayers that Nayra Caraballero says that the part of her salary that exceeds what she earned as a teacher is going to be donated, because in reality the cost is the same for the municipal coffers,” adds the popular mayor .
“Ridiculous” allocations to the opposition
Luisi Castro did not question the legality of raising the salary during the plenary session, but he did criticize that he did not have a minimal motivation or justification in the file, beyond the mere “effrontery” of the new tripartite government to take advantage of the fact that, when Güímar passed 20,000 inhabitants (it has 21,200), now the wage limit allowed by law is higher. “Not everything that is legal is moral,” emphasizes the former mayor of the PP.
Likewise, the PP questions the “ruse” used so that Airam Puerta (PSOE) and Javier Delgado (CC) have a 75% dedication regime but charge as much as those who have exclusive dedication, assigning them a monthly bonus of 830 euros, so that they can make it compatible with other economic activities outside the City Council. No less surprising is that the two councilors who have not been released and who, therefore, do not get paid by the City Council, have their allowances raised from almost 36 to 200 euros for attending government meetings, which can practically earn them a kind of ” hidden salary, an expression that they did not like in plenary, but that is not at all uncertain”.
In contrast to this “wide hand” of the CC, PSOE and USP to raise their salaries, the PP complained in the plenary session about the “ridiculous” economic allocations to the opposition: 40 euros per plenary session (about 7 euros more than in the past mandate) and 17 euros per board of spokespersons (same amount as before), amounts much lower than those of other town councils, but which the tripartite government refused to increase.
In any case, Luisi Castro makes it abundantly clear that the PP “is not going to fall into the trap of the CC, PSOE and USP to put a smokescreen over their scandalous salary increase with this request to improve diets by the opposition, but it does want to make clear the malice, arbitrariness and inequality of criteria of the proposal approved in plenary and the contempt for the work of the opposition, whose control function is as important as that of governing”.
