After leaving them on the table due to lack of support a few weeks ago, the PSC has achieved this Friday the abstention of the commons to approve the municipal budgets of the City Council of l’Hospitalet de Llobregat.
Next year, municipal accounts will rise to 324.7 million euros, 66.2 more than the current year. They are the highest in history and, according to the Councilor for the Treasury, Fran Belver, they respond to a “context of uncertainty and lack of definition.” Belver refers to the fact that both the State and the Generalitat have not yet prepared their budgets, it cannot be ruled out that fiscal rules now suspended will be reintroduced and, furthermore, the inflationary context with rising prices. All in all, the City Council will see its spending increase by 33 million euros.
Belver has asked municipal groups to “join efforts just as was done to get out of the covid crisis with the city pact.” In the same plenary session, the tax ordinances have been definitively approved, with a general increase of 3%.
L’Hospitalet en Comú Podem has explained, through a press release, that it has facilitated the approval of the budgets by understanding the “responsibility that, as a political group, we have with our city” given the consequences that a budget extension could have on a context of economic difficulty for the City Council.
Of course, the commons have clarified that they are not the budgets that they would have made. Now, they have celebrated that the agreement with the socialists includes introducing measures such as “the acquisition of land intended for green areas and social rental housing and the improvement of the Guàrdia Urbana as a community police force.” The entente has 46 points.
For their part, ERC-EUiA, PP and Vox have voted against. The three formations temporarily abandoned the municipal plenary session when it was time to vote, considering that the mayor, Núria Marín, had gone too far in an intervention, as explained by Television de l’Hospitalet.