The Yaiza City Council approved this Wednesday the budget for the year 2022, which amounts to 23.1 million euros, 1.2 more than in the 2021 financial year. The government group, composed of UPY and CC, approved the accounts, with the abstention of PSOE and Ciudadanos and the vote against PP and Lanzarote en Pie.
“The Institution is prepared to assume the challenges of the end of the legislature, guaranteeing and improving essential services such as garbage collection and cleaning of the municipality, large-scale works that citizens are seeing, activities to promote sports and culture, noticeably palpable, and the silent but effective work in social care”, said the mayor, Óscar Noda.
In the detailed breakdown of the budget that the mayor made in the Plenary Session, he recalled that “Yaiza is the most investing City Council in Lanzarote and we will continue investing with treasury surpluses without neglecting citizen attention, and responding with the public services of the partial plans that we are receiving as we have just done with Castillo del Águila”.
From the southern Consistory they point out that it is not the first time that the investment chapter appears in zero in the Yaiza budget, as reflected in recent years. "But it is no less true that between the years 18 and 22 it has incorporated 21 million treasury surpluses, currently having 11.5 million to complete works in progress such as the Playa Blanca Sports Hall and undertake new projects already drafted and ready to be put out to public tender", added the City Council.
“We finished paying the financial debt in 2018, which today remains zero, and since then we have a better settlement of the budget and this has allowed us to promote large works with our own funds and have money to co-finance projects with other administrations”, pointed out Óscar Noda.
One of the four axes of the budget explained by the mayor was that of Social Welfare: “It is true that with the increase in the tourism business and the generation of employment, in fact, we are the tourist municipality with the least unemployment in Lanzarote and also the one with the fewest job seekers among the most populated, the request for aid has decreased, but we are in a complicated situation due to inflation and we must be prepared to respond”, noted the mayor.
Yaiza assures that it allocates more money to make the commissioning of the municipal nursery more viable in view of the public tender for its management, with the aim of "lowering the price for families who need it, going from 120 thousand euros in the 2021 financial year to 221 thousand euros for this 2022 financial year". “This file has a clear social objective, as does the item for study grants, which goes from 80 thousand to 100 thousand euros, and the 200 thousand euros that we allocate to co-finance employment plans”, highlighted Óscar Noda.
On the other hand, from the Consistory they maintain that the item destined to the solid waste collection service is increased by 200 thousand euros, thinking about the new tender for the service that is underway with the approval of the feasibility study that the City Council will publish in these days for its period of allegations".
“I have no problem in recognizing that we delayed the approval of the budget to accommodate the total cost of improving the municipality's waste collection service, of about 2.8 million euros, but I also say and prove with facts that the Yaiza machine neither stops nor slows down, and I refer to the facts”, added Noda.
Another service that has seen its amount increased, according to the City Council, is "the street cleaning of the municipality with the extension of the contract to the company FCC by expanding the cleaning action areas". “Although it has been compensated with the completion of the similar service carried out by the company Urbaser in the town and avenue of Playa Blanca. Regarding maintenance and cleaning of playgrounds and bio-healthy ones, an item of about 77 thousand euros is allocated to cover this service that has been awarded a few weeks ago to keep both the new and rehabilitated playgrounds as well as the old ones up to date”, detailed Noda.
In relation to supplies such as public lighting, the mayor explained that “taking into account the increase in the amounts of electricity and that light boxes from some partial plans have been received, that item has been increased by almost 100 thousand euros”. "Yaiza is working on the tender for the public lighting of the partial plans received to change them to low consumption and carry out maintenance as is being done in the rest of the municipality, which will significantly reduce these costs”, said the mayor.
Óscar Noda defended the budget “convinced that Yaiza will continue to be the benchmark for the progress of Lanzarote, knowing that there is much to be done and improved”.
