At the last plenary session of the year, held this morning, the Mijas Town Hall approved the budgets for 2024, which amount to 129,687,168.70 euros, representing an increase of 16.59% over the current budget, which has been extended from 2022.
Providing the municipality with annual accounts was one of the priorities of the government team chaired by Ana Mata (PP), who has stated that it is "a budget that is committed, responsible and adjusted to the reality of Mijas that will respond to many of its needs. It is a fundamental tool for planning its growth and for this growth to be achieved in an organised and orderly manner, not based on improvisation or arbitrary decisions". Mata also recalled that since 2018 Mijas had not approved its budgets before the 1st of January. The accounts have gone ahead with the votes in favour of PP, Vox and PMP; PSOE and Cs voted against.
In this regard, the councillor for Economy and Finance, Mario Bravo (PP), recalled the need to provide the municipality with a budget that sets a "clear" course, while stressing that the entire government team has worked in coordination to offer a budget "made by a single government team, composed of councillors from three different parties but who have renounced to some identity based principles in order to share common objectives", said Bravo, who added that these are "aimed at serving the citizens and making Mijas the best place to live". "I think we can be proud of having fulfilled this first objective, not with ourselves, but with the almost 1,000 employees of this Town Hall, who I hope will help to make it a reality with all the inhabitants of Mijas and with all the companies and self-employed people who work with us", added Bravo.
Infrastructures
These budgets include infrastructure projects, highlighting three of them to which have been allocated 300,000 euros for the corresponding drafts: a project for the reconstruction of the building over La Puente to "reinforce, in this way", according to the Executive, the character of Mijas Pueblo as a historic-artistic site; new municipal facilities in the surroundings of Cortijo Don Elías in Las Lagunas which, in addition to the administrative offices, will include spaces for leisure and commercial activity; and a sports complex in La Cala in the area of Cortijo Colorado, which responds to the "neighbourhood demand due to the shortage of this type of facilities because of the increase in population in this urban area in recent years", adds the government team.
These accounts also include proposals to unblock the Coastal Path, the extension and improvement of the football pitch in La Cala, the project for a new nature trail running from the Lagarejo area to the Fuente de la Seda, the improvement of pedestrian traffic from Puerto de Los Pescadores to Osunillas and the improvement of the Islas Marianas roundabout (Las Lagunas). To this must be added 100,000 euros for the sanitary improvement infrastructure project, one of the first commitments made by the government team.
In short, the Town Planning and Infrastructures Departments will have almost 2.5 million and more than 11 million euros, respectively.
Social policies
In terms of social spending, the budget amounts to more than 7,600,000 euros, with a 7.16% increase in spending on the elderly, a 51.38% increase in nursery schools and a 46.53% increase in the Open University. However, the bulk of this item is earmarked for social services with 3,307,100 euros, "confirming the firm commitment of the government team to social policies", municipal sources stress. In the same way, the items earmarked for subsidies to non-profit organisations or associations will be maintained in accordance with the municipal strategic plan for subsidies designed to ensure that "all associations working in the municipality have the same opportunities when it comes to applying for the available aid", the local government points out.
One of the objectives of these annual accounts, the council stresses, is to strengthen the Department for Employment Promotion and Business Development in order to "generate wealth and, therefore, favour the creation of jobs". For this reason, the executive explains, "the budgetary allocation for these two areas totals more than 300,000 euros. With all of this, investment in Mijas and the consequent creation of employment is favoured, at the same time as the municipal administration is made more agile, for which a calendar of commitments will be put in place so that it has a maximum response time to the needs of the citizens.
Other items
To this must be added the 3.5 million euros earmarked for Mijas Complementary Services, known as Basic Income, a budget "exactly the same as in the previous five years", says the government team, which does not rule out extending it during the year. Another of the priority axes of the approved municipal accounts is the chapter referring to the urban mobility plan, which has been allocated 68,365 euros. In addition, 450,000 euros have been earmarked for digital modernisation, which will involve the creation of electronic files and digital administrative procedures. The aim is to improve management, transparency and communication between the Town Hall and citizens. More than 6.8 million euros have been earmarked for environmental and waste collection activities, while the town's cleaning service has been allocated more than 4.3 million euros. For its part, the Cultural Department has seen its budget increase by 7% to 1,521,122 euros.
Revenues
In terms of income, this will come from the IBI (42 million euros) collected from the 62,803 urban properties registered in Mijas, which, together with other taxes and fees derived from the urban development activity and the participation in the income of the State and the Andalusian Regional Government, will complete the almost 130 million euros.
Before the end of the session, the mayoress thanked the "tireless" work carried out by all the Town Hall staff who have made it possible "to draw up a budget which has been an example of teamwork in pursuit of the public interest". Municipal sources emphasise that this has been achieved "in just 40 working days that this team has been in the municipal government".
Government partners
The PP's partners in the local government, Vox and Por Mi Pueblo, have also valued the step taken today by Mijas in approving the general budget for 2024. Vox stressed that the approval of the document is great news for the municipality, and recalled that it has been done after having been without a budget in 2023, "we have managed thanks to the collaboration of the entire government team to get it out in record time", said Vox councillor Juan Carlos Cuevas, who added that these "will enable, among other things, carrying out contracts and tenders to meet the needs of our neighbours in a more effective and efficient way, making it possible to pay invoices to suppliers that were forgotten in the drawers by the socialist government". Cuevas also recalled that the budget has gone from 111 million euros in 2022, to a real budget of 130 million euros. "Vox Mijas in taking part in the preparation of the budget with the rest of the government team has focused mainly on ensuring good services to the families of Mijas, which for us must be, without doubt, the centre of all municipal policies", added the councillor.
For his part, the councillor for Por Mi Pueblo, Juan Carlos Maldonado, wanted to emphasise that the approval of the budgets "will allow us to reorganise, rearrange, plan and return Mijas to the path of budgetary stability and normality from which it should never have departed". Maldonado adds that these budgets demonstrate the government team's commitment to revitalising the economy, generating wealth and creating jobs, as well as a commitment to sectors such as agriculture, tourism and culture.
"What we approve here today represents a letter of presentation from the mayoress and the government team in their commitment to manage Mijas in a different way, complying with its neighbours, complying with its businesses, complying with its collectives, complying with the Law, improving procedures, managing with greater speed and transparency, in short, a change of direction for the better", concluded the councillor.
Reactions from the PSOE
The PSOE in Mijas has voted against this budget because of the way in which it has been presented, "with almost no time to analyse it", but also because of its content. "It is the first time in the democratic history of this Town Hall that a municipal budget has been presented in an urgent manner and the first time that the opposition has had so little time to analyse so much documentation, this is a disdain for democracy", said the spokesman of the socialist group, Roy Pérez, to which the councillor for Finance, Mario Bravo (PP), responded that "a contempt for democracy is not to make a budget, because we must remember that in 2023 the accounts were not approved as such, but rather it was an extension of the 2022 budget, which was approved in July of that year. Furthermore, it is a contempt towards all the companies that have not been paid this year because there was no budget allocation".
Regarding the fact that the budgets were drawn up in 34 working days, the Socialist spokesman argued that the previous government team had left much of the work done. "In addition to copying and pasting what others had already done, what you have done is to take out the scissors and you have done so by cutting essential areas such as Local Police, Fire, Education and Tourism, but the most worrying thing is that after years of declaring the Social Services item as unlimited, Mrs. Mata has come up with her first budget slash, reducing it by 7.5 percent, which means a reduction of about 270,000 euros".
In this regard, the councillor for the Treasury defended that "some of these items have been regrouped or reduced because the budget has to be balanced in some way, we can't include everything. But our intention is to execute it to the maximum, unlike in previous years, where many of the planned investments have not been executed".
As for income, the socialist spokesman assured that it has been inflated, especially in relation to the fees for the occupation of public roads, where it is estimated that nine million euros will be collected. " What is being presented is a budgetary falsehood because there is no economic report detailing how they intend to collect these barbaric millions for the occupation of stalls and barracas", he asserted.
Faced with this accusation, Bravo explained that these nine million euros refer mainly to the use of the Cortijo Colorado plot and the racecourse by the company that manages the Cala Mijas music festival, "and are based on three million euros per year for the celebration of this festival during 2022, 2023 and the next 2024".
Ciudadanos' reactions
Ciudadanos also voted against the accounts for next year. According to its spokesman, José Carlos Martín, the group would have liked to contribute suggestions to the budget and to have had more time to study it. He appreciates the continuity given to investments already planned by the previous government team, but he thinks that other actions are missing, such as the widening of the Camino de Coín road or the development of the municipal parking plan. "We see that there is a budgetary item for the Los Santos car park, but I don't see anything allocated to other car parks such as Las Cañadas, the Doña Ermita area, Fernán Caballero park", argued Martín.
On this issue, the councillor for Finance pointed out that "the previous government team was dedicated to promoting very necessary projects and with good common sense, possibly, but then we have to adapt them and establish how we are going to pay for them and include them in the budget in a sustainable way, because there is no point in having the projects on the shelf if we cannot allocate a budget for them or there is no land to do so, as has also been the case with the sanitation works in La Alquería".
Like the socialists, Ciudadanos does not agree with the cuts in certain municipal areas that they consider to be priorities, such as Operational Services, Education and Beaches. "I would have preferred to increase education instead of Agriculture and Fisheries, which has increased by more than 500 per cent. Or Town Planning, which has increased its budget by more than 440 percent, which is fine, but I would have preferred to increase sport and decrease this item", Martín gave as an example.
Surplus
The councillor for Finance stated that in the coming months the Town Hall's financial surplus will be known and, once it has been confirmed that there is a surplus, budgetary modifications will be approved in order to include new investments and take new decisions ""in the interests of the citizens". He also stressed that "the government team does not draw up the budget by throwing dice at random, but that there are many reports signed by competent technicians who accredit the financial viability of the amounts that are set out in this document".
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