The plenary session approves a new consumer bonus campaign #BenidormTeDaMás that will reach 2,097,278 euros

Benidorm City Council has agreed this Monday to enable a financial allocation of 2,097,278 euros to carry out a new edition of the #BenidormTeDaMás consumer bonus campaign, which will run between December 15 and 31 and will reach all registered people over 18 years of age, who will be able to benefit from it for Christmas purchases in local businesses. To this end, the municipal plenary session has given the green light to a budget modification, number 21, which has been debated within the extraordinary dispatches section and has been approved unanimously.

The councilor of the Treasury department, Aída García Mayor, explained that the amount allocated by the City Council to this campaign has a subsidy from the Provincial Council of Alicante that amounts to 647,278 euros. In comparison, the remaining 1,450,000 euros will be met with municipal funds. Of them, 450,000 will be transferred from money that is available in Chapter 1 of the Municipal Budget, where personnel expenses are collected, as explained by the councilor, who has also clarified that the other million euros will be transferred from this same chapter of the budget, but of other items whose modification is the direct responsibility of the mayor.

In this way, with the modification approved by the plenary session to enable this new edition of the #BenidormTeDaMás consumption bonus, “we fulfill our commitment to continue supporting families and our businesses,” García Mayor assured. The Councilor for the Treasury Department has also highlighted that Benidorm “is the only municipality that gives a significant amount of its resources, adding them to the subsidy granted by the Provincial Council, because we believe that it is a very beneficial measure for citizens and companies.”, remembering that in the last edition its economic impact “multiplied to 6 million euros.”

For his part, the mayor of the city, Toni Pérez, who also presides over the Provincial Council, has also highlighted that this provincial body “has given grants for all municipalities” and that “the difference between populations of another political color and Benidorm is that they take only that amount, launch a consumption bonus, and citizens have almost to fight to see who benefits. If we had done that, each citizen would have a bonus of 9.25 euros, but this government makes a universal bonus, for all registered people over the age of 18”, contributing municipal funds to the provincial subsidy to increase the amount to be distributed. between each neighbor. “The Christmas bonus has many more positive things than a simple bonus: commerce strengthens its turnover for the end of the year, the city gains atmosphere, our neighbors can buy on significant dates,” defended Pérez, who has delved into which “all people over 18 years of age will be able to benefit from this bonus under equal conditions until December 31.”

Likewise, and already within the order of extraordinary dispatches, the plenary session of the Corporation has given the green light to another budget modification, number 20, the amount of which amounts to 1,373,551.72 euros from the remainder of the Treasury for 2022. The mayor of the Treasury, Aida García Mayor, explained that of this total amount, 837,316.49 euros will be used to pay the new waste tax designed and approved by the Government of Spain, the cost of which the City Council itself will face "by allocating its savings from 2022 so as not to impact it” on citizens' receipts. Likewise, another 536,235.23 will be used to pay the extra costs of the electricity bill for all municipal buildings, as a result of the brutal rise in the price of electricity experienced next year.

This modification has gone ahead with the favorable vote of the municipal group of the PP and Vox and with the vote against the PSOE.

The councilor of the Treasury has declared that, in both cases, these are two payments that are "mandatory" and which the City Council "has to face no matter what." In this sense, García Mayor has regretted that the new waste tax approved by the Central Government of Pedro Sánchez "obliges us to pay the State more than 830,000 euros of our remainder that could have been used to help families, the productive fabric or other investments for our municipality” and recalled that this tax is also the reason why the City Council will have to raise the garbage rate in 2024. Regarding the extra costs of the electricity bill, the councilor has explained that the total amount calculated by the technicians amounts to €1,431,758.65, of which €536,235.23 will be paid with this budget modification and the rest will be charged to other items.

The plenary session has also moved forward, in this case unanimously by the Corporation, the General Account for 2022 as well as a motion raised by the Councilor for the Water Cycle, José Ramón González de Zárate, to participate in a second call for subsidies for projects digitalization and improvement of the efficiency of the water cycle within the framework of the Next Generation Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.

Finally, in this session, there was also a report issued by the Consell Jurídic Consultiu dated November 22 on the resolution of the management contract for the public service for the regulation of parking on public roads and the removal, immobilization, and deposit of vehicles in the municipality of Benidorm. Such report, carried out by the Consultiu at the expense of the City Council itself, concludes that the resolution procedure instructed by the municipality is appropriate and, therefore, endorses its technical processing due to the numerous non-compliance on the part of the company, the UTE formed by Buses Playa San Juan and Sociedad Ibérica de Construcciones Eléctricas, whose contract was formalized on May 4, 2015.

Among the non-compliances on the part of the company, which the Consell Jurídic Consulti also echoes in its report, include charging users more than what the applicable rate establishes; not communicating to the City Council the additional collection alleged unapproved management expenses; reduction of personnel assigned to the contract without municipal authorization; cessation of annual technical assistance; non-compliance with the existence of an office on the street with regulated parking; failure to comply with the vending ATM by not dispensing money; and non-compliance with office materials and equipment, due to the lack of availability of a plotter.

Among the points normally contemplated within the agenda, the plenary session has unanimously approved a proposal from the Board of Spokesmen to award the city's Corporate Medal to the Benidorm priest Jaume Benaloy Marco for "his fundamental role in the defense of solidarity between peoples and for their selfless work to improve the quality of life of people and our planet” as stated in the agreement proposal.

Last October marked fifteen years since he undertook what he described as “the most rewarding mission of his life,” fulfilling not only the assignment of the Bishopric but also a dream that had been in his head since his ordination as priest on June 26, 1999.

Benaloy was appointed in June 2008 by the Bishop of the Diocese Orihuela-Alicante to work in the missions of the diocese of Chimbote, in Peru, where he went in October of that year to carry out different evangelization work and help those most in need. , paying special attention to its great social and environmental problems.

Also unanimously approved was the start of the procedure for granting distinctions and decorations by the Generalitat Valenciana to the members of the Benidorm Local Police, Cross of Police Merit with Blue Badge, the agents Manuel Risueño Bañuls and Antonio Gorreta Amador "for excelling with notoriety and perseverance in fulfilling the duties of his position, having served more than ten years as a Local Police and having two public congratulations on an individual basis.”

On the other hand, with the votes of the municipal groups of the PP and Vox and the vote against PSOE, a PP motion has been carried out in defense of the Spanish Constitution, the equality of Spaniards, and respect for the rule of law and democracy. This motion indicates that the agreement of Pedro Sánchez's PSOE with the Catalan independentists "is the most serious attack on the rule of law in our democracy" and it is also stated that "such agreement desecrates the Constitution that we were able to build together in 1978.”

The motion accuses Sánchez of “not showing his face” because “he knows what this indecent agreement entails.” In that sense, he blames the President of the Government that "he knows that he is selling Spain, he knows that it breaks the equality of Spaniards before the law, he knows that the agreement denies that Spain is a rule of law, he knows that it dynamites the foundations of the separation of powers and knows that it will weaken the state of the Autonomies.”

The motion also ensures that the government pact "grants carte blanche to the holding of a referendum that has no place in our constitutional system, as the Constitutional Court has repeatedly stated." He also regrets that Sánchez has changed the votes that he needed to be president of the Government “for more than 15,000 million euros of the taxes of all Spaniards. A price that we will all pay and that will turn Spaniards into first- and second-class citizens.”

Finally, the motion expresses “the firm adherence” of the City Council to the Spanish Constitution, that Spain is “a strong, plural and principled democracy, with resources to counteract those who want to weaken it.” Likewise, the “firm rejection” of the granting of economic or fiscal privileges to any autonomous community is expressed “since it breaks equality and solidarity between all the territories of Spain.” Finally, the “rejection of any amnesty law for going against the principle of equality of all Spaniards before the law, as well as our rejection of the holding of any self-determination referendum for any territory in Spain,” is made clear.

A motion from the socialist group has also been approved, which has been amended by the popular group, to comply with the plenary agreement on the increase in the garbage rate, an agreement that was adopted on December 27, 2016, and February 26, 2018. This proposal initially asked to suspend the processing of the modification of Fiscal Ordinance number 17 until the mandate of the plenary session indicated in the first point of the motion was fulfilled.

With the amendment of the popular group, the proposal has agreed to “urge the government of Spain to eliminate or suspend, with effect from January 1, 2024, the tax part that, against taxpayers of the commonly called 'Garbage Tax', is imposed on “Law 7/2022 of April 8.” The agreement has been adopted with the favorable votes of PP and Vox and the opposition of PSOE.

In the debate, the government spokesperson, Lourdes Caselles, regretted that the Sánchez government had created the new garbage tax, which resulted in an increase of more than three million euros to be paid in the case of Benidorm. “If we don't pay the tax it would be a crime and the tax ministry would intervene” reported Caselles.

“According to the law, it is a finalist tax, that is, it must serve to improve the service, more and better containers, machinery… But in 2022 we have not seen any improvement. Zero” added the councillor.

Before the vote, Mayor Toni Pérez wanted to clarify that "the City Council does comply with the plenary agreements" and recalled that in this case "those plenary agreements to which the socialist motion referred had to do with the specifications of the new contract of garbage, which has not yet been approved.”