The proposal by a heavily indebted Loulé council to acquire an art deco café next to its offices was approved at the last meeting of the chamber.
Loulé Municipal Council is now to spend €182,000 of ratepayers' money on the building, the approved proposal will be signed off in a meeting on 30th April.
The Café Calcinha was classified as 'of Municipal Interest' in 2012 and is, along with other monuments and buildings in Loulé, seen by the council as a building that characterises the city.
The council’s bizarre arguments all point to its desire to ‘protect the heritage of the city’ without once explaining why the café is under threat, how the price was arrived at, or whether private buyers could have joined in and kept the site as a café with private capital.
The building is on the city tour and its facade and its interior is to be found in many tourist brochures and on the internet, but whether this purchase is the sort of thing the council should be involving itself in, or whether it should be sticking to its stated pre-election plan of helping the poor, is a moot point.
Loulé council has just been bailed out with a government loan of €14.5 million from the special reserve set up to help councils that were unable to pay their bills due to the interest payable on the massive debts they had run up.
Buying a café for €185,000 may represent a resurgence in the sort of fiscal idiocy that led councils into such massive debt in the first place.
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