ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE PEOPLE’S ASSOCIATION OF EORDIA FOR THE MEETING OF THE MUNICIPAL COUNCIL ON APRIL 15, 2024

On Monday, April 15, the Municipal Council of Eordia met.

In 1^the special meeting the Municipality’s budget for 2024 was discussed.

The People’s Rally voted against the recommendations of the municipal authority because for another year the budget is far from the needs of our fellow citizens.

The big picture for our municipality’s budget is the state budget for the year 2024 regarding municipalities and regions, where for years state grants have remained frozen and the direction of increasing “same revenue”, the revenue of municipalities that they come from the municipal fees and generally the drawing of the citizens.

In this direction, the figures brought to the draft budget by the municipal authority of Eordaia are revealing:

• The total state funding for our municipality is only enough to cover 68.89% of the amount of municipal employee payroll for 2024! So the municipality covers the rest from its own revenues (local taxation).
• To the municipality’s expenses is added the burial fee which exceeds €2.5 million, in the “pay as I fly” logic, as with the new cleanliness regulation voted by Mr. Plakentas’ faction, the waste burial fees are increased incrementally to 55 € until 2027, from €25 per ton last year.
• The household rate increases to €2.55 per sq.m. for cleaning and lighting fees. in conditions of accuracy and galloping inflation and also a huge increase that reaches 97.67% in some municipal units such as Muriki or Vermio with 42.86%. While the council is keenly looking for revenue, it has not taken the opportunity to increase council charges for large businesses (eg supermarkets, multinationals). On the contrary, he increased the fees of the Ptolemaida Hospital by almost €20,000.
• Through the budget it is clearly reflected that projects and infrastructures related to the protection of life and property of the people are not chosen because they do not bring profits for big capital.
• In the municipality’s technical program for 2024, the same tactic of “inflating” it is followed this year with projects and studies that are non-existent when there is a need for new schools, anti-flood protection projects, sports and cultural infrastructure.
• Anti-flooding projects are provided for very little, while for fire protection only the amount of 50 thousand € is provided, which is not sufficient in any case.
• For the repair and maintenance of the school units of our municipality, at a time when we have schools that are decades old and poorly maintained, the budgeted amounts, like last year, are not sufficient to cover the huge needs.
• There are zero amounts for anti-seismic protection and armoring even though most schools were built with anti-seismic rules before 1980. Most buildings are aged with a complete lack of static studies. We cannot tolerate half of our city’s kindergartens being housed on the ground floors of apartment buildings without courtyards, without adequate lighting, with all that this entails for the child’s health, safety and emotional security. We cannot ignore that for 16 years the 2nd EPAL has been “temporarily” co-located with the 1st high school with poor infrastructure.
• Among other things, we had the phenomenon of debts amounting to €2.5 million being written off by the municipal authority, due to the lapse of 20 years, without explanations being given as to the identity of the municipality’s major debtors, under the pretext of the non-existence of computerization in the municipality in past years .

Of course, there is not even a word from the municipal authority about a claim from the government. On the contrary, the “same revenues” have increased, i.e. the additional taxation, the fees and all kinds of fees imposed by the municipality with the commercialization of services and which come to be added to the taxes imposed by the state. The municipal authority accepts the directives for “realistic budgets that will in no way burden the state budget”.

At 2^the meeting that followedamong other topics, “the environmental impact studies of the special urban planning plan for the Ptolemaida-Amyndai-Kleidiou-Achlada delignitization zone” were discussed.

The above studies are an emblematic example that supporting the profits of the few cannot be reconciled with the satisfaction of the working people’s needs.

Furthermore, they function as tools to promote the urban planning of the “green transition”, part of which is lignitization, which aims to create new areas of profitability for big capital.

After all, the texts in which detailed reference is made to the specialization of urban planning in the region of Western Macedonia (European Green Agreement for Energy and Climate, EESS, operational plan of PPC-SDAM, etc.) are revealing.

The gifts of the green transition to the people are the “black” labor relations, the intensification of work without SSE, is the “normality” of workplace crimes-accidents like the recent one in Vermio.

It is the district heating prices that will increase significantly regardless of the outcome of the negotiations between the groups and the intermunicipal company.

Furthermore:

• In the specific M.P.E. the areas planned for the installation of PV parks are greatly increased at the expense of the areas that could cover popular needs (forest and agricultural areas)
• The total of proven lignite reserves that will remain untapped due to lignitization amounts to 505 million tons of lignite.
• For the restoration of tens of thousands of acres of mined land, only the amount of €148.71 million (including VAT) will be allocated, an amount that is not sufficient in any case.
• In addition, the study envisages the creation of 6 lakes with so far unspecified amounts of water and therefore there is a possible future risk for the wider geostatic stability and tectonics of the area, given the existing faults in the area.
• These studies also envisage RES installations with electricity storage. Energy storage stations have already been licensed in the municipality of Eordaia near the settlements of Olympiadas-Asvestopetra-Antolikou and Vlastis.
• The above projects are related to the further promotion of the “green transition” as they will increase the possibility of connecting more RES (wind and PV) to the system through the batteries, the energy groups intend that the electricity produced by RES can be sold at the maximum possible prices in the daily market of the energy exchange.
• Energy storage stations contain lithium batteries that pose a huge risk to the environment, health and safety of residents.

The Popular Rally voted against the M.P.E. as we did in 2011.

We invite the workers and the popular strata in our municipality to draw their own conclusions. It is necessary now through the people’s movement to resist, to organize and to prioritize the assertion of their own contemporary needs.

We have shown that there is another way out for the people, which is social property, which can ensure their well-being. It is the central authority that can centrally, scientifically plan production based on the totality of society’s needs. It is the energy planning that can utilize all domestic energy sources.

We will be with the people of the city in their struggles for a city with smiling residents, for all that we have dreamed of and deserve for us and our children, against a policy that crushes their lives.

Ptolemais 20/04/2024