The Teguise Plenary session held this Tuesday approved the awarding of the municipality's public lighting service to the company Imesapi S.A., belonging to the ACS group. This company was awarded this same service in the municipality of Yaiza a few days ago, which had also called a tender to renew its lighting.
The award in Teguise has been approved with the favorable votes of the government group and the abstention of the opposition. According to the Consistory, the contract will be for 12 years and the City Council will invest "more than eight million euros".
"The first part of the project must begin to be executed immediately to solve the problems that have been detected by the Corporation's technicians," they explain from the government group, thus justifying why the issue has been taken to an extraordinary Plenary session.
According to them, "thanks to these works, in the medium term the City Council will adapt to the Energy Efficiency regulations in Outdoor Lighting Installations, a new legal framework that is convenient and necessary to address the lighting problem".
The Councilor for Energy of the Teguise City Council, José Domingo Morera, has assured that this agreement "will result in benefits for the municipality." "There are many works that need to be undertaken; the public lighting service has become obsolete and this problem must be remedied to comply with the law and to put an end to the inconveniences generated by light pollution."
Cancellation of bank debt
Another point that has been debated and approved, with the abstention of the opposition, is the amortization of more than 500,000 euros for the cancellation of bank debt contracted with La Caixa and Banco Santander. According to the Councilor for Finance of the Teguise City Council, Miguel Ángel Jiménez, these payments have been possible thanks to the "financial health" of the institution. "With this type of procedure, the Corporation's debt is minimized. By paying the payments in advance, we have achieved savings of more than 30,000 euros in interest per year," he said.
The mayor of Teguise, Oswaldo Betancort, has positively valued the approval of these two points, which he considers to be "the most important" of this plenary session. "One of the objectives that we have set for ourselves in this mandate is to clean up the municipal coffers and liquidate the debt acquired by the administration. We also make an effort to improve the service to citizens without this implying a greater economic investment; for this reason we believe that the management model that we are implementing today for the lighting service meets the needs of this institution."
For their part, the opposition has criticized that they were summoned to this Plenary session "a few hours before" and without documentation on the issues that were going to be discussed, which has "forced" them to abstain. And among these issues, the PP and the PIL highlighted the extrajudicial recognition of invoices to suppliers, of which they criticize that the government group had not duly informed.