The mayor of Badalona (Barcelonès Nord), Xavier Garcia Albiol, has summarized the first hundred days of his mandate since he overwhelmingly won the elections with an absolute majority in May, alluding to a nautical simile. “We found the town hall like a ship that was leaking everywhere.” And this is precisely his main objective, the modernization and reactivation of the administrative structures of the big house “without which we will not be able to promote any project.”
At the moment, he explained that the hiring of 60 people has begun to cover different technical profiles (lawyers, engineers, administrators, architects, etc.) from the job bank, four more with a managerial profile and the public competition is activated. to hire a manager. In addition, 86 places have been announced in different municipal areas, to which unemployed residents can attend.
Albiol highlighted, continuing in detail the chaotic situation that the City Council is experiencing, that “there are departments that do not have lawyers, so they cannot promote projects with legal guarantees.” In parallel, three million have been allocated to amortize 51% of the bank debt. “It is not understood that having money in the bank, we must pay interest to the same bank because we have debts.” Now the debt has dropped from 34 to 17 million.
The popular mayor has made a very positive assessment of the first hundred days of his mandate “despite the circumstances” of finding a city council “much worse than we thought, almost bankrupt,” he asserted, to the point where orders could not be processed for promote service management. Added to this work is the stagnation of some departments with acquired vices, such as “that cultural activities cannot be contracted in summer because the two technicians go on vacation at the same time” or that the entire Urban Guard staff “does holidays in July and August, when there are more people on the streets.
Faced with the endless number of administrative grievances, Albiol assures that “we have started by addressing the basic problems” that the neighbors prioritize. In the field of cleaning, 500 containers have been acquired “which, oddly enough, we did not have any more.” The amount for road washing has been increased by 1.5 million and the procedures for bidding for a new cleaning contract are being accelerated “since the one we have has been extended for two and a half years.” The sports facilities have also received a boost with renovation works, such as the repair of the changing rooms at the Mireia Belmonte pool.
Regarding security, another of the neighbors’ priorities and one of the electoral bastions of García Albiol’s campaign, in these first months of his mandate, 1.5 million have been incorporated to reform the Guàrdia Urbana police station “which seems anchored in the eighties” and promoted the call to incorporate 46 new agents, of which 23 will join at the end of the week. And as he promised during the campaign, he stated that “we will end the mandate with a new Omega unit, more neighborhood agents patrolling on foot and ending illegal occupations of homes.”
“In three months – the mayor explained – the area councilor has attended to a hundred people affected” by illegal raids. In this sense, he has reported that the legal services are developing new strategies to increase the legal protection of the agents who participate in the evictions to prevent “as is happening now, the squatters have more rights than the police who are going to evict them” and that They are often denounced and can be disqualified for their actions.
In the field of squatters, Albiol also announced that “we will not negotiate social apartments for conflictive squatters” and announced that they have begun contacts with large property owners to resolve the situation of the stock of apartments that do not go on the market. In this sense, he stated that they will demand that the large real estate multinationals that operate in Badalona “comply with the law” and negotiate social rents with vulnerable tenants before proceeding with the evictions.
Albiol reviewed other issues such as the controversy that arose from the announcement of delaying the Low Emissions Zone and also took the speech towards the opposition parties of whom he said “I would ask them that, to oppose” but also that “they be consistent with what have stopped doing, until now, the non-management” that has characterized, according to him, “the previous four-party” executive. He assures that “I will talk to everyone and seek agreements” to achieve a climate of “political normality.” However, he warned that “Badalona is not here to waste time with sterile debates, nor to create commissions upon commissions to make matters worse.” He admits however that “I am not in possession of the absolute truth” which is why he was open to receiving proposals from the opposition parties.
The political parties in the opposition have agreed to show their disappointment at the completion of the first hundred days of the government chaired by García Albiol. Municipal spokespersons have indicated that the government does not meet the objectives it announced at the beginning of the political mandate.
Fernando Carrera, the president of the socialist municipal group, has highlighted that in terms of security, Albiol has not complied with announcements such as “hiring security guards” for municipal buildings and releasing agents from the Guàrdia Urbana. The Republican spokesperson, Àlex Montornès, summarizes that “he has not faced the great challenges”; Aïda Llauradó from Badalona En Comú, disgraced him for promoting a “foam board” government without a city project and finally, Dolors Sabater criticized the fact that he had focused on issues such as “seeing who has the biggest one” in reference to the announced Christmas tree by the mayor.
