Ramón Trujillo, spokesperson for United We Can (United Left, Podemos, Equo) in the City Hall of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, denounces that the Canary Coalition has granted, to several companies, the operation of six public car parks, in the center of the city, in exchange for an average canon, per space, of 40.9 euros per year. However, in a study by the City Council, from 2022, to award a parking concession, an annual fee of 396 euros is established. This means that, where Santa Cruz is collecting around 148,000 euros per year, it should be collecting 1,440,000 euros, which, however, it prefers to give away to companies.
Trujillo denounces that the City Council not only demands ridiculous payments, as a canon, for the most lucrative car parks in the city, but also that the concessions have been granted for fifty years, instead of the 32 years proposed when it was intended to demand a fee of 396 euros per place. And, as if these legal abuses were not enough, the six car parks indicated by United We Can have been charging a premium for years, in the hourly rate, which ranges between 66% of the legal maximum allowed and 16%.
Currently, the Bermúdez government is requiring these companies to reduce rates to the maximum legal limit. But the companies will not be sanctioned, nor will they have to return even one euro of the amounts overcharged in recent years.
The municipal spokesman for United We Can He points out that the Canary Coalition governs for a wealthy few and allows the money that people pay to park the car to go, in a disproportionate percentage, to business profit. And, likewise, that payment for parking hardly contributes to the municipal coffers and includes a surcharge. And all this through concessions that last 50 years and that, in the case of the Tomé Cano Car Park, will last 99 years for spaces managed for subscribers and not in rotation. It is difficult to find a management model that is more detrimental to citizens and more beneficial to four businessmen.
The six car parks indicated by Trujillo are those of Tomé Cano, Puerto Escondido, Avenida de Anaga, Puente Serrador, Plaza Weyler and Estadio. These car parks, together with the one located on Ramón Y Cajal street, are the seven that the City Council has required to lower rates that exceed the legal maximum. The Ramón y Cajal car park is not included in the UP calculation because it paid the canon for 47 years at the beginning of the concession. The amount paid was an average of 28,019 euros per year, that is, 60.2 euros per place per year.
United We Can denounce that, during the next 20 years, Santa Cruz will lose more than 24 million euros for having set ridiculously low parking fees because the Canary Coalition preferred that this money go to increase business profits, rather than to the municipal coffers. The UP municipal spokesman affirms that Santa Cruz suffers millionaire losses every year due to the accumulated mismanagement of the Canarian Coalition.
