Cremona Sera – A city that drags on in neglect

The so-called little things are the ones that require the greatest attention. Even mayoral candidate Andrea Virgilio recognizes the importance of the topic: «The worry is not having been able to allocate more resources to ordinary management (…) As for the future, I believe that the city needs greater oversight of everyday life.», he admitted at the opening and presentation of his candidacy. However, the topic slipped away with the same snobbery with which the centre-left has always treated the requests of citizens who over the years have vainly asked for greater attention to everyday life, care, decorum, cleanliness, maintenance interventions, actions administrative that demonstrate an attachment, a care of one’s “home”.

«It was, however, a political choice aimed at finalizing large-scale projects», continued the mayoral candidate Virgilio, who speaks the truth when he talks about the political choice he (have) made, but pursuing “large projects” it should not have excluded the ordinary. The strategy for the future does not exempt us from taking on the needs of the present.

And in fact we find ourselves in a city that drags on in neglect and experiences daily resignation.

The emblems of neglect: the very poor cleaning of sidewalks and streets, tufts of weeds sprouting everywhere (from the center to the outskirts), bins too often full of (uncivilized) abandoned waste, manholes that overflow with water in the first half day of rain ( that rain that we invoke so much to ward off drought, but which brings us to our knees as soon as it arrives a little more abundantly), pedestrian crossings that are often poorly maintained and poorly lit, street furniture that even when placed new is no longer preserved (we are unable to guarantee the conservation of the violin in the hands of Stradivari in the iconic statue on Corso Garibaldi in front of his house), the city lacks the colors and greenery that we only see during the beautiful botanical invasions.

The emblems of resignation: Corso Garibaldi which from San Luca to the intersection with Corso Campi lives a double antithetical identity (the first serves as a thoroughfare and the second seems the ideal film set of a “ghost town” – a mention of true honor for those very few traders who resist), via Giordano subject to attention only for the construction of the supermarket. It is the resignation that accompanies the wait for the delivery of the doubling of the car park in Via Dante; it is the resignation of waiting for the works on via Mantova/via dell’Annona (also the entrance area of ​​the city) to be completed. It is the resignation of the lowered windows and the nocturnal gatherings around the vending machines which, in defiance of the rules to which the merchants are subjected, are not even address books of orders for night closures. It’s the resignation of when a traffic light goes haywire and you have to wait for the company that manages the service – not even that one anymore from Cremona – to have time to intervene.

I will be addressed with the now inflated derogatory adjective of the “usual populist”, while the same admission of failure, if pronounced by the current administrators, is defined as a “hot front of the work of perspective”. But the substance is the same; the dilemma we face, however, is: believe those who say they regret not having been able (or wanted?) to allocate greater resources – in 10 years – to ordinary management and promise that they will do so, or give the opportunity to demonstrate to be different from those who, in the last 10 years, have always downgraded everyday life to a topic of secondary importance?

Fratelli d’Italia is very clear that if we don’t take care of the house, the inhabitants will want to change it or leave, the guests will not return and those looking for investment opportunities will look elsewhere.

Brothers of Italy