The municipal groups of the Popular Party and Vox have reached an agreement to carry out the announced project of creating a structure of professional managers hired to direct certain areas. The proposal has been approved – amid strong protests from municipal workers present in the room – in today’s plenary session by the 14 councilors of the PP government team and the four councilors of Vox.
In a first phase, the agreement contemplates the appointment of the two general coordinators of a new management level and of the general directorate of Planning and the Urban Planning Plan (PGOU), whose candidates have already been defined. The following management positions will be filled progressively, as the corresponding candidates are evaluated and their appointment is deemed appropriate.
With respect to the general directorates of Central Services, Environment, Culture and Sports and Innovation, their materialization is subject to whether they are considered necessary in the future, once the functioning of this new organizational structure has been verified.
The Vox spokesperson, Carmen Robledillo, has taken credit for having reduced the number of planned directorates, and has accused the opposition of “acting demagoguery”, when in municipalities like Gandia – governed by the left – “there are three general directors with 74,000 inhabitants”.
He has also attributed to his party the inclusion in the pact that the 2024 municipal budgets must include a sufficient item to materialize an agreement between the Government team and the unions and the implementation of the professional career of City Hall officials.
It must be remembered that Luis Barcala resigned on October 6 to present this project to the plenary session, precisely because Vox, whose support was essential, had expressed reluctance and his vote against was feared.
The spokesperson for the socialist group, Ana Barceló, has accused Barcala of having hidden his plan in the electoral campaign, and of having the purpose of “delegating powers to his friends, not to the most competent. He wants appointments by hand, not with a selective process”.
Rafa Mas, spokesperson for Compromís, believes that the project creates “a political monstrosity, a parallel government that no one has elected”, which will cost one and a half million euros. Manolo Copé, from Unides per Alacant, has shown his total solidarity with the unions that come to complain; “There is money for what they want, there is not money for a professional career, but there is money for general directors.”
The plan foresees the hiring of two general coordinators, something that has already been agreed today, paid with salaries of 82,000 euros, and several general directors – today the first hiring will be approved – who will earn 75,000 euros. All of this, taking advantage of the provisions of the Law of Large Cities. The left-wing opposition has repeatedly expressed its refusal to support the plan.
