PP: 2021 has finished “the same as the previous year”

Thursday 23rd December 2021 – CARLOS LÓPEZ with Mike Smith

PP Xàbia has published an assessment of 2021, a year in which they claim that “we are [in] the same [position] as the previous one” and in which the most important and expensive projects that the council has underway “have so many drawbacks” that some of them have been suspended for more than a year.

Party spokeswoman, Rosa Cardona, claimed that the municipality “remains neglected” and is not prepared “to get out of the crisis” and declared that it has been 365 days in which “we have not prepared ourselves to be as attractive and competitive as possible”.

Cardona gave several examples, and referred to the reform of the Graüll College (a project which is currently in the process of hiring an architect); the auditorium “a bad dream”, in which the crane has been removed and from which “little good can be expected”; and the industrial estate of Catarroges that continues “without having a company that assumes an outdated urbanization project”.

But she also criticized that the new contract for rubbish collection and street cleaning “has been awarded without participatory meetings” and considered that “there has been so much confidentiality and secrecy that participation has been zero.” At this point, she recalled that the opposition parties “decided blindly on the proposal for the award of municipal technicians and two hours to review a project of a thousand pages.” This confidentiality has been a workhorse among the companies that participated in the contest, with various resources.

In terms of discharges, Cardona referred to the Ramblars landfill fire (which has been burning for four weeks this Sunday) and assured that “it is clear that they hide what we all imagine” and asked the local government not to “hide, accept that unfortunate events have occurred”, which are,” he stressed, “a consequence of their mismanagement.” Along these lines, she asked “that something be done so that the residents of the area – and the rest of the municipality as the wind blows – stop breathing that toxic smoke.”

Also Cardona stressed that “we continue to drag important problems that should already be solved, such as the Arenal floods, cleaning, proper maintenance of beaches, gardens, parks, pavements, green spots, Ramblars, the sewage network, and the treatment plant.”

No budget for 2022 10 days before the end of the year

In addition, Cardona criticized the fact that, ten days before the end of the year, and with the Christmas holidays in between, Xàbia Council “still does not have a budget” approved and updated to the current circumstances and was confident that they could take it forward and “have a roadmap in 2022”. Because, she remarked, that without budgets “there is no possibility of hiring more police, more personnel to reinforce other areas of the town hall and thus streamline management.”

In this budget, the PP is committed to including, among others, an item “for maintenance” of municipal public spaces since, according to Cardona, “there has not been an intervention in restoration and maintenance of painted facades.” The last was the intervention in the Central Cinema, but the blackened walls of the museum continue, as well as the peeling paint of the Casa de Tena and the Municipal Market.