ROVIGO – Claudia Biasissi and Paolo Giolo, from the ‘Civic for Rovigo – Edoardo Gaffeo Mayor’ list, intervene on the two hottest topics of recent administrative life. “Casa Serena and the swimming center have one thing in common: these are difficult situations that arise after the Municipality decided to sell some of its properties to other entities (public or private) so that they could manage them for collective use for the benefit of the citizens. The results produced by these choices are there for all to see: both accomplished with the right hand leading the city.
It was the mayor Paolo Avezzù, in 2004, who sold Casa Serena to Iras with a 99-year agreement. The Veneto Region and the Board of Directors should have managed the social and health care service for the elderly and invested in the property, which never happened. The Municipality – Biasissi and Giolo continue – only had the power to appoint the Board of Directors, but without any power over it: Iras should also have taken care of both the ordinary and extraordinary maintenance of the structure.
After 20 years, what are the results? Iras returns a property in terrible condition, unusable, with a long series of problems – certified by the office report – which require large sums to resolve.
Far from being a ‘good deal for the Municipality’: this is certain damage to the citizens, whose political responsibilities are clear and belong to a ruling class that has made mistakes.
The Gaffeo administration, on the contrary, had devised a program agreement that would have involved Ater, Ulss and the Region to redevelop a building which required over 30 million euros: this plan was ruined from within (President of the Council and right-wing group leaders) with the failure to convene the city council at the end of 2022, when there were favorable opinions from all the bodies involved. And now the city finds itself with a problem again, with the Veneto Region not changing the intended socio-welfare use of the property (when in fact it had already been foreseen in the December 2022 agreement).
For the swimming center, the story is very similar: it is granted for use to private individuals in exchange for its construction in 2006 and with the Municipality having to pay an annual fee of 300 thousand euros for the use of 6,000 hours/lane each year.
In the minutes of both the city council and the commission of inquiry, the city councilors of the center-left minority loudly asked what guarantees the Municipality had asked for in case the takeover became necessary due to bad management. The answer? No guaranteesindeed this agreement was considered a deal (another one!).
The administrative managers and center-right politicians who signed the agreement could have simply provided for a guarantee to be paid by private individuals, for a duration equal to the agreement. In addition to this, stringent clauses to oblige managers to periodically inform the owner body on the state of the property, with tasks that identify specific managers, including managers: this was said several times in the city council by the centre-left minority, but these requests remained unheard.
After the failure of the project financing in 2014, everything remained in limbo: there were 4 legal proceedings pending with requests against the Municipality for a total of 13.5 million euros (of which 9.3 were estimated as highly probable of losing).
The Gaffeo administration managed – in December 2020 – to close the case with a disbursement of 5.2 million euros (in reality the cost is lower as there is a property and land that can be included in the disposal plan).
The Municipality thus regained the availability of a damaged property: it managed to find the funds to fix it. The maintenance process has begun during which, as normally happens, there was a stop in activities which however served to resolve the problems that were blocking the service for the city. The reopening of the internal pools is scheduled for the end of the month, the external recreational ones for next month (READ ARTICLE).
It is clear that these problems were created at least 20 years ago by a political class that is now trying to run again in the elections despite having generated costs and inefficiencies for the community: in recent years the Gaffeo administration has had the courage and competence to face the problems by bringing them – for the collective good – towards a solution with all the means available. And even though the experience was cut short just before the finish line, the work carried out continues and will continue and with it also the emergence of responsibilities (political and non-political) for what happened” conclude Biasissi and Giolo.
