Primero Teguise, after the approval in plenary of the annual budgets for 2025, set out to analyze item by item the variations that existed, taking into account that the result was practically the same as in 2024. However, "there are modifications that mark a dangerous line to cross. Beyond the stagnation that having budgets with only 4% investment entails (including an almost million-dollar compensation), a total abandonment of the development of the municipality in many areas is reflected," they criticize.
"For example," begins Jonás Álvarez, president and councilor of PTG, "cutting employment plans or freezing the agriculture item condemns us to depend on the private sector for job creation. This is not new, year after year we have seen how the investment chapter has decreased, but on this occasion they even leave items almost to the minimum, such as Urban Furniture, which has decreased by 90%, so we are going to have 5,000 euros for the entire year for the most extensive municipality in Lanzarote."
The insularist formation also criticizes the item both in works or infrastructures, as well as the works plan, which as a whole in the investment part is only allocated 300,000 euros: "this item does not face even the maintenance of the sixth most important municipality in the Canary Islands, or the expense of security and communication material, local police, which also decreases by 15,000 euros compared to the previous year."
Álvarez points out that "Teguise is in a state of total stagnation, with real needs in infrastructure, cleaning and maintenance. We have even given up on the investment, but even with these they cannot use every euro that has been collected. They prefer to waste and increase spending on Festivities or give 70,000 euros to Olivia Duque to make some online podcasts camouflaged in the Municipal Radio, which cannot even be heard on the City Council's website. Why do we all have to pay for our mayor's whim?". Breaking down chapter by chapter, PTG finds a large drop in the Contingency Fund, where 360,000 euros are cut.
"We thought that having suffered such painful floods in Costa Teguise and Tahiche so recently, these budgets would have a marked roadmap for the
prevention and recovery. But none of that. Not only do we have less money in anticipation of future adversities, but we also do not have specific items for the rehabilitation of Costa Teguise or managing works in the Hurón ravine," they declare.
In the words of our deputy mayor, Rita Hernández, they are "austere and realistic budgets." Responding to these statements, Álvarez concludes with this conclusion: "The PP spokesperson is absolutely right. They are austere and realistic. It has become realistic and normal to approve budgets without citizen participation (which, by the way, is decreasing again), without the possibility of amendment by the opposition, and depending absolutely on state and European financing that we will never know when or how it arrives."
"It is curious that we gamble everything on one card when this year we have had an enormous growth in collected taxes and from Primero Teguise we estimate that they will continue to grow like this, taking into account the increases in the Waste Collection Rate, for example. We find it hard to believe how a party, the PP, which boasts of being an excellent manager, is not capable of making its government partners see how to better manage our benefits. Maybe they don't know how to do it either, and they prefer to tell us that to be clean, orderly and safe we have to be austere," he concludes.