The municipal government of Cross port (PSOE-ACP) approves a budget modification of €8.2 millionwhich come from municipal savings or treasury remnants, to be invested “until the end of the year” in an increase in aid and subsidies to families, social, cultural, sports and business groups in the city, and investments as an Asphalted Plan valued at one million euros. For the opposition (CC and PP), the last savings of the City Council are squandered Portuense with expendable expenses such as “one million more for Festivals and Culture”.
This modification of the budget reserves some 3 million euros for local groups, one million for paved roads and 400,000 euros to finance new aid to entrepreneurs and the self-employed, such as the entrepreneurial check. Mayor, Marco Gonzalez (PSOE)maintains that «of the 8.2 million, more than 3 million are dedicated to helping all these groups continue to carry out their activity in the city, so this saving, which belongs to everyone in Porto, will revert directly to the benefit of the entire community to continue developing, together with the City Council, the strategic lines of the model of co-government of the city that we intend».
PP and CC accuse the socialists of “squandering” the last savings of the municipality
The mayor of Economic Development, Carolina Rodriguez (PSOE)denies that this measure harms the balance of the municipal coffers and maintains that «the guidelines to complete this document with coordinated work with all municipal areas have been to preserve budget stability with a healthy city council, which uses all its financial muscle to consolidate the recovery of the city».
Caroline Rodriguez says that these 8.2 million extras complete a budget that “adhered to very restrictive and austere criteria, adjusted to the reality of these last two years, which were the hardest in democracy and that we have already left behind, which allows us to set our sights on the budget for 2023, which will have an increase in income thanks to this recovery and the significant private investment that is committed to this city and to the renovation of its hotel facilities.” An investment that they assure exceeds 40 million.
The PP denounces that this credit modification «it is approved to spend the last millions of euros that remained of the treasury remnant of the Consistory, which was more than €30 million in 2019, leaving the amount available to meet unforeseen or urgent needs at zero.” The PP criticizes what it considers “the waste of municipal misgovernment, which has exhausted in just three years all the savings that the people of Porto cost so much sacrifice to achieve. That way, Of the 39 million euros that were in the coffers when the Consistory entered to govern, there is no longer a single cent».
CC also criticizes the approval of “an extraordinary credit increase of one million euros for Festivals and Culture, in addition to an increase in fixed expenses, which mortgages the future of the city.” For Sandra Rodríguez, this agreement “is intolerable” and “prioritizes events and partieswhile real investment and city planning, which should be the priority in this mandate, has disappeared from the government’s political agenda.
Rodriguez urges PSOE and ACP that «they do not execute this modification that ends all the savings of the citizens, and that also leaves without the capacity to cover the mandatory services that must be improved, such as cleaning or garden maintenance, in 2023. In addition, it disables future governments to carry out voluntary policies, and even endangers subsidies to groups in years to come. by growing the fixed expense exponentially».
