The Save Faro Alliance with two seats on Faro council has criticised the approval of this year’s municipal budget, commenting that it paralyses the local authority and strangles civil society.
The €46.7 million budget for 2015, approved last week at a meeting of the municipal assembly, was purported to contain “concrete actions to promote quality of life, to promote economic and social development of the municipality and its reputation."
The six major areas that the council said it wants to concentrate on are fixing public spaces and roads; social support and fixing the housing stock; grants to parishes; grants to community organisations; and encouraging private investment.
The Save Faro Alliance led by former mayor, José Vitorino, says the money sent to parish councils, social institutions and communities, cultural projects, sports and youth funds is a ‘meaningless’ amount of around €500,000.
Save Faro considers "that the situation of poverty that has been reached is the inevitable result of several wrong choices made by the two major parties (PSD and PS) as Save Faro has long predicted, denounced and criticised."
For Save Faro, the council has spent millions of euros on things that have been "unacceptable, expendable or too costly."
The list of poorly thought out spending is a long one but includes the acquisition of land in Montenegro for housing citizens who are being kicked out of their homes in the Ria Formosa Islands, further investment in Polis which anyway is being wound up this year, high management fees, the competition for public transport, procurement of school meals without tender, the contract management of green spaces by Fagar, the money owed by Ambifaro to BES which was taken over by the council, and the expenses of council heads which are "excessive in these times of crisis."
See: http://www.algarvedailynews.com/news/4387-faro-council-balances-its-books
