Airam Puerta assures that the salary he receives from the Güímar City Council in his capacity as first deputy mayor and councilor for the Management and Control of Concessionaire Companies will be reduced. The Plenary, at his proposal and in an extraordinary session, approved the measure, for which he goes on to charge 46,070 euros gross per year (2,031 euros less than until now), divided into 14 payments. An amount that decreases by reducing their level of dedication to the Consistory, which goes from 95% to 75%.
The socialist mayor also announces that he will return to the municipal coffers the difference received since the plenary agreement to reduce his salary was adopted, a fact that occurred in the session held on July 15 and that was ratified in another plenary session that It took place last Monday. Consequently, Puerta explains that he will return to the Güímar City Council the proportional part of the July payroll, as well as the full difference of those corresponding to August and September.
The modification of Airam Puerta’s salary is motivated by the change in the Mayor’s Office, in compliance with the agreement by which PSOE and Canarian Coalition formed the Güimarero municipal government in 2019. Both Puerta and the current mayor, the nationalist Gustavo Pérez, They received the amount corresponding to 95% of the dedication to the position. It was on June 21, 2019 when the Corporation approved the salaries of the local government, which included 48,101 euros for the alderman and the first deputy mayor. With the change in the Mayor’s Office, which occurred on July 1, 2021, Airam Puerta kept his salary.
But that agreement was appealed. In a ruling released by the Popular Party (PP) on July 11, the Contentious Administrative Court Number 2 of Santa de Tenerife annulled the payrolls for July and August last year of the mayor of Güímar, Gustavo Pérez (CC) , and the first deputy mayor, Airam Puerta (PSOE), as well as a payroll and a half corresponding to those same months of two councilors from the Güimarero government group: Juan Delgado (Municipal Works and Services) and Cándido Gómez (Citizen Security). The court decision alludes to formal defects. A sentence that is also appealed before the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC).
exercise of responsibility
The first deputy mayor maintains that “I have decided to lower my salary in an exercise of responsibility and paying attention to what is reflected in the sentence, which advises that there be proportionality between responsibility and remuneration.” He also defends that he is in charge of “the most complicated area that a public office can have, which is the Department of Town Planning.”
Puerta recalls that both in the first half of the mandate and today, With the reduction that is applied, the salary is “very far” from what is allowed as a maximum by law, which amounts to 61,427 euros gross in the year.
Francisco Hernández Armas, a PP councilor, justified the PP’s rejection of Airam Puerta’s new salary. In the plenary session held last Monday, the mayor questioned the first deputy mayor who relies on the “high degree of responsibility” conferred on him by the matters whose management he has attributed to justify the salary he asks for. “This being the case, I don’t understand how he only wants to dedicate 75% of the time to carry out this arduous task with a minimum guarantee.” The PP values that the decrease in salary is not proportional to the dedication to the work for which he is paid.
