Exchanging a more expensive debt for a cheaper one, while making a strong commitment to reducing expenses, is the short-term solution of the Vila Real de Santo António Chamber to straighten out the municipality's complicated accounts, announced on Monday, October 18, Álvaro Araújo, mayor.
On the day you reported the result of an internal audit of the Chamber's accounts, which brought to light situations that will be reported to the judicial authorities, the Vilarreal mayor revealed how he will begin to try to mitigate the 160 million euros of established debt.
«What we are going to try to do is, through the Municipal Adjustment Program (PAM), guarantee 36 million euros, to pay off bank loans. This is very important, because we have our assets mortgaged to the banks. We can do without this building [Paços do Concelho], without the Sports Complex, without the Camping Park… if the bank executes our debt, we will be without this», illustrated Álvaro Araújo.
«The situation is serious, so it is very important that this amount comes quickly from the Municipal Support Fund (FAM), so that we can pay this debt», he reinforced.
This is because, from the moment the Chamber repays the loans it has to the bank, it stops paying «interest of 5% or 6%», and starts «paying to the FAM, with interest of 0,95%. Debt service will drop exponentially.”
On the other hand, the Chamber has been focusing on reducing expenses with water, sanitation, energy and gas.
«We are talking about savings that will be around 200 thousand euros per year. And we're talking about little things, like the electricity and water meters that were scattered all over the place», said Álvaro Araújo.
And many situations were found, to say the least, ridiculous.
One of them, as the president of the Chamber of VRSA had already told the Sul Informação, took place at the Sports Complex.
“We decided to control spending on water and sanitation and carried out an exhaustive survey of all accountants. And we discovered that there was a domestic meter associated with the Sports Complex's irrigation system, whose bill in September 2021 was 20 thousand euros. This is the kind of thing that cannot happen”, he said during the session.
Last September, and already after three holes had been reactivated, which were part of the irrigation system but were not being used, «the bill was 814 euros».
But this was not a unique case.
«We had a series of meters connected to beach supports, for foot washing, in which we were being charged a sanitation fee, when the water went to the sand and not to the sewage network», explained Rui Setúbal, the financial advisor who coordinated the team that carried out the internal analysis of the municipality's accounts.
«Only of mobile meters, which are used for fairs and other types of events, we had around 40 years ago that paid for water and sanitation every month and they didn't even exist anymore. Today we only have one”, he added.
With regard to electricity, in addition to lifting meters and eliminating unnecessary ones, there was an effort to regularize the situation, since “there were constant delays and, as such, interest on late payments”.
The gas bill also went down. «In the pool complex we have solar panels [thermal solar] that were operational. With an investment of 5 thousand euros, they are working and the water in the pools is now heated using solar energy», concluded Álvaro Araújo.
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