The municipal government of Cabrera de Mar (Maresme), formed by an absolute majority of Junts and chaired by Óscar Fernandez, has been forced to raise the IBI by 36% after 13 years without modifying it. The increase, which has caused much concern among the population, has coincided with a cadastral review that Jordi Mir's government requested from the State Cadastre Office last year, after 24 years without doing so, with the review being mandatory every 10 years. A circumstance that, added to very poor previous economic management, has placed the municipal coffers on the brink of technical bankruptcy.
According to municipal sources, the economic remainder of the Cabrera city council (what is called savings) has been seriously affected by the use of this for three years to, as they claim, cover the budgetary imbalances caused by a poor income forecast and expenses during the 2020, 2021 and 2022 budgets.
Added to the erratic management of the previous executive were the economic losses caused, for example, by the loss of income from the IBI of the highway, a ruling that forced the city council to refund the economic activities tax (IAE) to Leroy-Merlín for value of 250,000 euros, returns of capital gains or the return of taxes to the State for an administrative error in 2018 worth 250,000 euros.
To all these issues, we must add the increase in the cost of living in the consumption of electricity, gas or water from municipal facilities during the 13 years in which municipal taxes have not been raised.
In this legislature, if it had not acted urgently with the application of the cadastral review, according to the same sources, the council would receive 6,000 euros less next year than it received, since there are cases in which the cadastral value has decreased instantly and on the other hand, for homes in which the cadastral value has increased, the increase will be progressive over 10 years, which would mean a loss of income of 6,000 euros for the year 2024.
All of this, taking into account that the municipal coffers are in a serious situation, forces the reaction of the municipal government, which otherwise would have been doomed to an unprecedented economic crisis, with the possibility of entering into technical bankruptcy and that the municipal accounts were intervened by the State.
In the shorter term, as the municipal auditor verbalized in the last plenary session, proof of the economic crisis is that essential bills cannot currently be met, taking into account that energy bills are due from March 2023.
To reverse this situation, the municipal government claims to be working on regularizing contracts, creating a contingency fund, reducing expenses until achieving a budget balance, paying outstanding invoices to suppliers and updating tax ordinances, which according to the same council would be very outdated, even with rates from more than 20 years ago transformed directly from pesetas to euros, without adjusting the necessary proportion. For all these reasons, the municipal government assures that it wants to organize the situation and work quickly to achieve it in the short term.
