The spokesperson for the Socialist Group in the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Ariagona González, appeared this Monday at a press conference to assess the budgets presented by the Government Group for this 2024. The socialist has described the accounts as "imprudent and disappointing" and has highlighted that they "reflect the most absolute lack of a project for Lanzarote on the part of the government group." Among them, she has criticized the lack of the "million-dollar investments" announced by the current island government to solve the problems with water.
In this line, González has highlighted that the island accounts "do not take into account the scenario of fiscal discipline that we will face throughout this year", while adding that "they do not respond to new challenges and are limited to giving continuity to the policies of the previous government".
In this line, the socialist has recalled that Europe "marks the return to the path of fiscal discipline, although it has not yet been specified in what way it will limit the spending ceiling, prevent the generalized use of the remainders and condition the possibility of resorting to bank financing, generating genuine uncertainty".
Despite this, she has highlighted that the current budget is "loaded with subsidies, without any margin to collect the items destined for investments, indicating that these will be included against remainders, despite the fact that they recognize in the Presidential Report that as of today it is unknown how the rules of fiscal discipline will affect".
For the socialist spokesperson, "this is a genuine irresponsibility that can condemn the Cabildo to an entire year without public investment: It is a bleeding irresponsibility because it responds to an exercise of populism in its purest form, since it has been preferred to present a budget loaded with subsidies even if that means putting public investment at risk".
A continuist budget
"But in addition to being irresponsible, imprudent, these budgets are disappointing, because they are continuist, since they do not make the slightest attempt to adapt to the new situations that have appeared," González reproached.
In this list she has pointed out, "if you look at the Presidential Report, almost all the sections begin by explaining that continuity is given to the policies undertaken by the previous government group and, at most, it is presumed of the growth that some of those items have experienced, but the conditions in which this budget has been prepared are not the same as those in which the previous budget was approved".
Thus, the councilor has explained that the current situation presents "important changes" not only due to the recovery of the rules of fiscal discipline, but because "new needs have arisen, highlighting two of them of extraordinary importance".
Los Ajaches power line
In the first place, the socialist spokesperson has referred to the need to allocate an economic item, which she put at around twelve million euros, to finance the undergrounding, in the section of Los Ajaches, of the new power line that Red Eléctrica will execute.
"They imposed on us the nonsense of crossing Los Ajaches with fifty-meter-high towers due to the inactivity of the Cabildo presided over by Pedro San Ginés, now we have to pay for that error to avoid the deterioration of one of our spaces of greatest environmental and landscape value," she explained.
Likewise, the councilor referred to the increase in evictions that will presumably occur when the temporary suspension of the same expires, a measure that cannot continue to be extended in time, and will force the Cabildo to intervene: "They have maintained for 2024 the same amount that we reflected in our 2023 budget, when the needs will be, unfortunately, much greater this year".
The great forgotten: the Integral Water Cycle
Ariagona González has recalled that despite the fact that one of the great challenges facing Lanzarote at the moment is the Integral Water Cycle, after "the president's rush out in the summer announcing multi-million dollar investments that would be executed immediately, these investments do not appear in this budget".
"The only major intervention planned for this new year is the execution of the agreement signed with ACUAES by the government of Loli Corujo, which will involve the improvement of the wastewater treatment plants of Tías and Arrecife, for an amount exceeding 27 million euros, while, in the budget presented by Oswaldo Betancort and his government group, the real investments included in the budgets of the Consortium and the Council do not reach two million euros," the councilor reproached.
The socialist spokesperson has expressed her astonishment at the absence in the Presidential Report of any reference to water in Lanzarote: "As of today, the only one who has a plan for water in Lanzarote is Canal Gestión and that plan foresees that the administrations, with the complicity of Oswaldo Betancort, will take charge of replacing the pipes that Canal Gestión should repair".
The La Santa shelter will have to wait
Ariagona González has considered "extremely striking" the absence in the budgets of any reference to care for migrants, especially unaccompanied foreign minors, recalling the irresponsible demagoguery of Coalición Canaria with the use of the La Santa shelter to care for these minors and the boastful promises they made in the campaign promising to immediately recover the shelter.
"It has not been like that. It was just one more of Oswaldo Betancor's ideas, one more of his empty promises, and the situation has not changed and the worst thing is that there is no item to rent, buy or build the alternative facilities that would allow us to stop using said shelter," González stated.
No changes in dependency
"The Socialist Party left in an advanced state of processing the creation of a consortium capable of comprehensively addressing dependency with the introduction of advanced telecare services and an increase in funding of ten million euros from the Government of the Canary Islands and the launch of an autonomous body that would directly manage all services related to disability," recalled the councilor, regretting that the current Government Group has renounced to continue advancing in the modernization of services, maintaining a system that generates precarious employment and does not guarantee the quality of services.
"It cannot be forgotten the falsehoods that have been wielded by the current Government Group when it was in opposition and, even, during the first months of its mandate when it affirmed that in a couple of months the contractual relations with the operators of the third sector would be formalized. In the end, it was nothing more than a new idea, a new falsehood, of Oswaldo Betancor," explained the councilor.
Reformulate the budget
González concluded by pointing out that the Socialist Party ratifies its consideration that "this is not the budget that Lanzarote needs and that the most notable thing about it is the increase of 22.15% in the remuneration of the councilors for the exercise of their positions as of June 26, 2023 or the creation of three new positions of general coordinators at 88,958.72 each".
Likewise, and according to the Socialist Group, "it completely lacks strategic vision, it is an imprudent and continuist budget, so the PSOE requests its withdrawal and that the accounts be reformulated to present a new project that responds to the real needs of Lanzarote".
