The company that manages the cemeteries of Santa Cruz since 1995, Cetensa, has resorted to the courts, time and again, demanding payment of the maintenance fee for the niches that their owners would have to pay and that the City Council has refused to transfer to them. Being included in the original specifications, the courts have ended up agreeing with the company in each of its demands, which means that, at this time, the Consistory owes the company more than three million. Precisely, this system, which the Councilor for Public Services, Guillermo Díaz Guerra, considers “unsustainable”, is what makes the Consistory already consider changing the management model of cemeteries after the end of this concession, which will take place in 2025. Before, “we will review the accounts of the state of the service; you have to get to the bottom of the fine print. We are already working on that and it will probably take us all of 2022. In 2023 it will be the time to decide which model we want, whether to rescue the concession so that it is a public service or whether to go out to tender again. In 2024 it will be time to make the decision. This is how the first deputy mayor explained himself during the appearance in the Municipal Control Commission requested by UP.
The mayor of Public Services indicated that until last December an agreement was on the table for the company to stop going to court to collect that fee, so that the City Council would execute the payment of everything owed at once. , with a discount of 20% for early payment, and thus regularize the payment of amounts. However, “at the last moment it was picked up with one more request, related to the collection of IBI receipts with which the company does not agree and which has also appealed in the Treasury area. In this case, he requested that the City Council pave the way for that other matter.”
The refusal of the Consistory to mix both processes broke the agreement. “The City Council has decided to maintain its tax position in defense of its rights, so we have transferred to the company that it resort to the same route that it has been resorting to so far to collect, that is, the courts,” he said.
Asphalted
Guillermo Díaz Guerra was the protagonist of a second appearance in which the PSOE questioned him about how he was going to carry out the asphalting of almost 50 streets in the municipality if the City Council’s budget did not collect that money. The mayor admitted that he only has 800,000 euros and that he trusts that throughout the year budgetary modifications can be made to tender the different projects already approved. In any case, Díaz Guerra admitted, the bulk of the proceedings would take place in 2023.
