The exemptions and discounts of local taxes and fees applied by the municipal government of Arona Since the Covid pandemic was declared in March 2020, together with the loss of income due to the economic crisis derived from the stoppage of tourism and restaurants, they have led to a decrease in collection of around ten million euros. For this reason, the Aronero government group considers it necessary “to wait for the settlement of the municipal accounts for 2021” to prepare the budgets for 2022. The Councilor for Finance, Raquel García, clarifies that “if a budget is presented now, it would be necessary to reflect in the public accounts this decrease in collection, which would mean countercyclical budgets, without investments and which would greatly reduce Arona’s room for maneuver.
With this clarification, Arona’s command team came out yesterday at criticism of the PP at the start of the City Council in 2022 without a budget project. Raquel García considers, in response to the popular people in the municipality and her spokesperson, Águeda Fumero, that «before hastily defending the approval of the new budget, in a scenario like the current one, of great uncertainty, the most prudent thing is to wait to know the settlement of accounts from last year to decide the most rigorous and beneficial strategy for the residents for this year’s budgets. The councilor for the Treasury and first deputy mayor has asked the popular spokesperson to “clarify whether at the same time she asks for a budget she is offering her support or is it the same practice as the rest of the mandate, in which she demands questions that are later not has no intention of endorsing ‘.
The Popular Party Aronero denounces in a statement that “for yet another year, the local government has been unable to approve a budget for the next fiscal year ”. The spokeswoman, Águeda Fumero, assures that “it is disastrous for the municipality, since the budget is the main document available to any administration, which reflects the strategic lines of work for the following year.” Fumero highlights that “in the midst of the worst economic crisis we can remember, the Aronero government is unable to draw up budgets that respond to the needs of citizens”, something that he considers “truly worrying”, since “it is a situation that it reveals the lack of aptitude that this government has to guarantee that public resources are properly managed, so that residents are served efficiently. “The fact of having, again, an extended budget, implies not having funds destined for public investment, the promotion of employment or the efficiency of Social Services in our municipality, among other issues,” Fumero stressed.
The mayor of the Treasury insists that “we must wait for the exact data of the budget settlement of the past year to be known exactly in order to make the right decisions, looking for the approach that most benefits all neighbors of Arona, for which it is necessary to clearly know what the figures for 2021 are and not throw more uncertainty into the current scenario. García specifies that “at the moment, current legislation allows us something that had not happened in years and that we had been demanding for a long time: the use of the remaining treasury, which in the case of Arona is 80 million euros.” “Our proposal is that these savings generated are not to pay interest to financial entities, but rather that they revert to the improvement of the municipality. And so that they revert to the improvement of the municipality is for which we have presented credit modifications throughout the year ».
The head of the Treasury concluded by making it clear that the PP and its spokesperson “should avoid the cynical attitude that it maintains when it asks for a budget and investments, makes press releases and criticizes issues of the municipality and then systematically vote in plenary against everything. what she herself has demanded months ago, as if the neighbors did not realize it.
