A pseudo-merger that has the flavor of an annexation that risks turning into an expensive bureaucratic machine to the detriment of citizens who up to now would not have been involved in any way, which should be totally rethought by creating instead a larger metropolitan area that also includes other territories where services are merged and not, this is the fear, identities. All this in the belief that the new reality will not be such on January 1, 2027, but that everything will shift to 2029.
This in summary is the position that the president of the municipal council of Spoltore Lucio Matricciani reiterates once again, commenting on what has been done so far for the birth of Nuova Pescara, or rather Pescara as he underlines, underlining the fact that this is the name that they want to give it somehow betrays the political project which sees it as annexation and not as a merger.
A position that he puts in black and white in a letter addressed to the president of the Region Marco Marsilio, the president of the regional council Marco Marsilio and the candidate mayors of Pescara Montesilvano (Carlo Masci, Carlo Costanini, Domenico Pettinari, Gianluca Fusilli, Ottavio De Martinis, Fabrizio D ‘Addazio) asking everyone to take a step back and, in fact, to cancel that project and think of a totally new and different one. A project he is asking to be implemented that he had also spoken about in recent months: the merger of services also with Francavilla, San Giovanni Teatino, Città Sant’Angelo and Chieti.
The letter from the president of the municipal council of Spoltore Lucio Matricciani to the Region and mayoral candidates
“As an administrator, I have the duty to follow up on the popular will, expressed in the 2014 referendum, to unite the City of Spoltore with those of Montesilvano and Pescara. However, it is my deep conviction that this merger will not work, and that the communities of Spoltore and Montesilvano, sooner or later, will return to asking to be independent, as already happened for Spoltore after the annexation to Pescara in 1927. So, why wait?”, he begins.
“Another of my duties as a citizen representative is to tell what I observe and think: the path that is leading to the merger with Pescara is no exception. And therefore I have decided to intervene, today and in the next few days, to inform the three populations involved, the press and stakeholders of what is happening. Because despite everything, I would be sad to hear, after the fact, – he continues – ‘Matricciani was right’. So we might as well get to work immediately to make things go in the right direction.”
“Many have spoken and speak in the newspapers and on TV about New Pescara, filling their mouths with empty slogans, simply because they have party ambitions to satisfy or dream of leading and managing the new city – he adds, entering into the merits of what was said here during the election campaign -: everything proceeds without real involvement of the citizens, as demonstrated by the total absence of the press and ordinary people at the meetings of the constituent assembly”.
“I feel like I am Pescarese no less than I am Spoltorese: I am convinced that Pescara should be a tourist, liveable city, a living room in the centre-south, but not to the detriment of Spoltore and Montesilvano. In recent months the administrators of the capital, of both sides, have worked on what I believe, or rather I am convinced, is aa form of annexation destined to completely erase the identities of the communities of origin, on the model of the Russian invasion against Ukraine – Matricciani goes so far as to say -. Pescara doesn’t even want to change its name, and become, as requested in the referendum, ‘New’ Pescara: a symbolic fact, of course, but emblematic of the political project that it wants to realize”.
“I have always remembered that it was possible to respect the will of the referendum by creating a new institutional entity, a metropolitan city capable of uniting some services, verifying their convenience and quality in everyone’s interest, but to do so a broader project would be needed, which interests a larger population base than that currently affected – he reiterates –. The merger of the first services, which is underway, has already brought the first problems and a generalized increase in costs. Today Imu and Tari in Spoltore are a third of those in Pescara, where even driveways are paid more: recently in Spoltore it was necessary – to comply with a legal obligation – to increase the taxation of the latter by 40 percent. Nonetheless, the amounts are still half of those foreseen in Pescara”.
“The propaganda of the referendum rode the wave, which was impetuous at the time, which called for a reduction in the costs of politics and public administration at all levels: but the New Pescara, as it is taking shape, will bring new expenses, new bureaucracy, new administrative steps”, comments Matricciani. “I then want to make a completely pragmatic consideration – she adds –: I am ready to bet that completing the merger, also taking into account the electoral deadlines, will not be possible in 2027 and everything will be postponed to 2029”.
All this “considering that for the territories affected by the process it is not possible to work on the regulatory plan, there is the risk of going forward for a decade only with program agreements, keeping urban planning documents in place, this is the case above all of Spoltore, created many years ago in a completely different social, economic and political context. I therefore predict that the merger, managed in this way, will lead to a general setback of our communities and a serious slowdown in their development”,
“Without forgetting that the largest city of the three, Pescara, at the time of the referendum started with a deficit, to be covered through a rebalancing procedure, equal to over 63 million euros to be repaid in 10 years (i.e. by 2024). Spoltore, on the other hand, has been approving budgets that are always in order for 40 years – he says, raising an issue on which he has spoken several times -: it is clear that the rapid implementation of the merger program will not benefit the citizens of Spoltore, and probably not even those of Montesilvano and Pescara, if we think about the increase in expenses and the fact that we are already thinking of using the funds made available for the merger in ordinary administrative works, completely disconnected from the infrastructural endowment intended to give direction to the territorial vocation to be realized ”.
“What I see is a pseudo merger, useful only to the Municipality of Pescara to occupy non-urbanized areas of Spoltore and Montesilvano with the aim of relocating all the critical situations of the capital city”, he states, clearly expressing his idea about the big city.
“In the last twenty years, while right-wing or left-wing administrations were in office, we have repeatedly nominated the Spoltore area to host a high school, a hotel institute, a fire station, a stadium (in the Cavaticchi area ), an exchange car park to relieve the center of Pescara from traffic and smog. We have never received positive responses from the administrations of Pescara and the Province, and the latest case is that of the new regional headquarters under construction in the resulting area”.
“I hope – he concludes – that future administrations, the one just elected in the Region and those that will soon be elected in Montesilvano and Pescara, will be spokespersons for a rethink on this merger, to be overcome by thinking in terms of the metropolitan area”.
