Escorca town hall has a case for receiving special treatment.

Escorca town hall has a case for receiving special treatment. | C. Moreno

Majorca Daily Bulletin reporterEscorca17/12/2018 17:27
TW

Escorca town hall is to receive a grant of 200,000 euros from the Council of Majorca. The payment is specific to Escorca, the councillor for local development, Joan Font, recognising that the municipality is a unique case. In terms of land, it is is one of Majorca's larger municipalities, but more or less all this land is protected. There are fewer than 250 residents, but there are also thousands of tourists each year. This tourism means extraordinary costs for the town hall, especially when it comes to rubbish collection and waste management. One truck can travel some one hundred kilometres to different points in Escorca and then to Sa Pobla to deposit waste created by only a few actual residents.

The town hall has long called for it to be given special treatment. It operates deficits because it doesn't have sufficient sources of tax revenue to cover the costs it incurs. The mayor, Antoni Solivellas, is pleased that the Council is making the grant as it will mean that the town hall can avoid financial loss related to an outstanding dispute with the Council from 2016.

This had to do with four public works projects that the town hall undertook. The Council maintained that only one of these was legal. The Council was meant to have subsidised the works, which the town hall had gone ahead with and paid for. The grant will now offset any financial loss.

Solivellas is grateful to the president of the Council, Miquel Ensenyat, for the 200,000 euros being made available. He doesn't thank Joan Font, who he blames for having created the problems in the first place and for having denounced the town hall to the prosecution service.