Eloise HorsfieldBy Eloise Horsfield
HOUSEHOLDS in Nerja are outraged at the prospect of a three euro per month rubbish tax.
Set to be charged from 2013, the fee is being introduced by the cash-strapped PP town hall – whose debt reached 4.8 million euros in 2011.
It is hoped the new tax will generate 540,000 euros annually.
Finance councillor Antonio Villaclaras said he had ‘no choice’, reasoning that the tax was substantially lower than what other town halls in the Axarquia charge.
Opposition parties have criticised the move, saying Mayor Jose Albert Armijo has broken his election promises.
They say that he undertook to freeze taxes and rates.
Last time we were in West Cork, Eire on holiday the lady renting the cottage to us asked us if we would kindly take our re-cyclables to the Council depot as rubbish bins are weighed by the lorry and bills sent out monthly. I happily complied.
Yes they tried the same thing in the northeast of uk but it didn’t work as so many people complained as they were also talking about putting a micro chip in the lids of the recycle bins but it backfired as people were damaging them so they couldn’t be read. It was an unfair system as people with very little waste were paying the same amount as people with lots of waste. To be honest I feel it’s wrong as that was the whole idea of bring out the council tax but because of the economics of the world I think the governments will try anything to get in as much money as possible. At the time of this micro chip thing I lived in a block of flats and we had communal bins from both recycling and ordinary rubbish so again an unfair system as we didn’t have anything to pay.
Of course people should pay the council to clear up after them. What’s the alternative? Throw your bin-bag out of the front door into the street?
As much as possible should also be recycled but Nerja still doesn’t even treat sewage just pumping it out to sea!
The thing is people do pay the council to take away the rubbish as that is what some of your council tax is for. I think the point Lindsay was make was that people are being asked to pay more money on top of their normal taxes to have their rubbish recycled…no one minds recycling as it’s better for the enviroment but there are limites..
The problem with southern med countries they just haven’t got it yet that you can’t just pump raw sewage into the sea and expect it to just disappear…but unfortunitley they don’t build drains like we do over here, thats how when it rain over there it floods and the drains back up and in some parts it ends up in the street.
I think the story here is that people in Nerja don’t want to pay more than they should just because like many other Spanish town halls they are just trying to get as much money out of people as they can to pay off the debt they are in which is at the moment causing concern in Spain as the national is mostly made up of the debt of the regions.
As a businessman, I wonder WHY the obvious need for Nerja’s sewerage treatment plant has NOT been completed, some 15 years after it was approved. So raw sewerage dumps onto the bathers’ bodies…. nice for tourism, NO? Now facing an EU Fine, who pays for that- Town Hall Politicos or Taxpayers? At what point do Taxpayers legally hold local Politicians accountable for doing their fiduciary duty for their Taxpayers?!
What happened to entrepreneurship in Spain? Couple of bin-carts, two or three willing guys (or gals) and they could clean up in Nerja.People would be happier paying that three euros to proper workers, rather than faceless ajuntamiento geeks. Plus, citizens would be entitled to keep back any refuse disposal component of local taxes.
Make the townhall show us the books. i’m damn sure we could all agree on ways of cutting costs. (all except a few cronies that is)
Wait – they are “outraged?” Over 3 Euros? I think when people type “lol” most of the time they are not laughing out loud. However, this was one of the few times on the Internet I read something and literally laughed out loud.