The municipal executive of Castro Marim will have "new responsibilities related to the priorities and challenges of municipal management in the next four years", which have already been distributed by Francisco Amaral, mayor of Castro Marim, to himself and to the other two elected representatives. by the PSD, who are full-time councilors: Filomena Sintra, who remains the vice-president, and João Pereira.
According to the Chamber of Castro Marim, the city's top priority is the creation of a housing policy “that is able to accommodate the new families of Castro Marim, attracted by the new economic dynamics of large projects such as Verdelago, the Eco Hotel da Maravelha or the plantation and exploitation of medicinal cannabis, which represent an undeniable opportunity for growth and territorial development».
"The interior of the county could be an enormous asset in this policy, with the coverage of the Internet network and mobile phones being worked on as a factor for settling young people in the interior and for combating desertification," he added.
“Water efficiency will also be one of the biggest challenges of this new mandate. Considering that this will be a XNUMXst century problem, especially in this territory in the northeast of the Algarve, this new mandate should present a new licensing policy for more efficient projects in terms of water consumption, as well as work on replacing obsolete water networks and their efficiency, not only from the perspective of reducing losses, but also in improving the quality of service provided», also revealed the municipality.
The Chamber also assumes as one of the struggles for the next four years «the new national policy on urban solid waste, imposed from March 2022, which requires the selective separation of bio waste, which must pass, without fail, for the awareness of the big producers, which are the restaurants, in accordance with the terms of the Law, and for the creation of an efficient internal structure».
On the other hand, there is the issue of the rising collection entity, “which is no longer able to support what is the demand for selective collection. Although this has not increased, the law will oblige large producers to have an autonomous selective collection, and municipalities cannot bear these costs».
“These are new challenges, which imply a new structure, a new municipal awareness, the reorganization of services and also a permanent, continuous training”, underlines the vice-president Filomena Sintra, to whom these areas of action were assigned.
In the context of licensing and land use planning, «the main municipal challenge is linked to the transformation of what is the land law in the last 45 years, and a large part of urban and urbanized land will now cease to be so».
“Now this will imply a policy of close proximity to the investing citizen. It will not, however, be the only priority in terms of rural development, linking to the other with the reforestation of all burned areas and the fight against desertification, which, in the opinion of this municipal executive, involves a new retention policy and water collection and for supporting the creation of organized structures for structuring projects of planting, care, exploration and maintenance», reveals the Chamber.
In the field of Electrification and Public Lighting, the responsibility given to councilor João Pereira, «the priority is the energy transition of buildings, public lighting and new licensing».
At the same time, skills are being transferred in the areas of beaches, health, education, social action and natural spaces, "which implies the assumption of new capacities for which the municipality is not yet adapted", he stresses Francisco Amaral, who has most of the areas in question.
According to the mayor, the municipality of Castro Marim "has always opposed this model of decentralization, not noticing that there is greater effectiveness or efficiency, but feeling that they now have to be responsible for the operational services of the great state machine."
He stresses, however, that they work, in parallel, "in the decentralization of competences to the parishes, to free the municipality of its own competences and be able to dedicate itself to these new ones".
“In terms of the national situation, the end of the current community support framework is also approaching. The Algarve is one of the regions that receives the least, as it is not considered an Objective 1 region, and, in parallel, it is faced with a Recovery and Resilience Plan that does not allocate specific funds to the municipalities, which cannot be counted on in the new challenges in financial management”, concluded the Chamber of Castro Marim.
Can check here how the different areas were distributed.
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