MESSINA – I-hub funds at risk for Messina. This is what we have headlined in recent days, raising some doubts about the future of the technological center that the municipal administration would like to create in the area of the former Granai Silos and the dock worker’s house. The general director of the Municipality, however, is not pessimistic Except Puccio: “I answer with a fact: how much was the demolition of the I-hub originally supposed to cost? 16 million euros. How much did the demolition of the fish market cost? One million and 600. How much should the remaining part have cost? 10 million 600. The one of ten cost 1 million 600 and the one that remained cost 4 million 700. In short, a lot of money was saved. We are using those complementary funds to complete the interventions that we had started with the PON, the National Operational Programme. The I-hub is therefore not a risk. Among other things, the demolition of the former dock worker’s house and the former granaries will go to tender very soon. And the 4 million and 700 are there. They are foreseen in the reprogramming. The cost also concerns the movement of the Enel ATM cabin”.
Puccio continues: “We have released the funds that were originally for the I-hub. In March 2023 we made the executive project and there we actually saw how much the work cost. The money for construction is in the Pon Plus 2021-27. Nobody touched them. I’m there. There is no risk. As in the case of all extra-budgetary funds, when you have the economic availability to carry out the planned works, the money is there. We at Pon will report 131 million. But, be careful, we will report another 22 million of funds that we had already spent on the Poc, Complementary Operational Programme, and we will bring them to the Pon. Then where do we report those works that we have created on the POC? In the next program. The efficiency of the spending machine can never be so exhaustive as to spend one hundred percent. There will always be a discount but the decisive question is this: have you contracted out all the works of the 2014-20 Pon programme? And the answer is yes. Are you making them? Yes”.
“Part of the I-hub economies are served by the streets”
And again: “All the axes have been achieved. The digital has all been contracted out and is nearing completion; the social and environmental have been completed; React ForestaMe everything has been contracted out. Indeed, part of the savings of the I-hub, not the tender reduction, but what was expected 16 and cost 1 million 600, was used to redo the roads. I am referring to the asphalts, from via Libertà to via Cesare Battisti. The line was coherent and they were projects that could be done immediately. If we had more time we would have done other routes too. An organization is virtuous when it has ready projects. We will compete immediately for Mili’s school because we have the project ready. And we put it in the 2021-27 program. There is no risk for the I-hub because the reprogramming calculations take into account the needs of this technological hub. The original amount was not decreased because we needed money for other things but because the project required a lower amount. So we use that money for something else. Some expenses in a project will never be useful to you because they are either auction reductions or unexpected events that never occurred. Or sums for the design which, in a hurry, you do inside (of Palazzo Zanca, ed.) and the costs are significantly lower than outside”.
“The loss is when you don’t contract the work and your funding is revoked”
The general director of the metropolitan city also continues: “When you recover a lot of sums, if you don’t have time to commit them again, unfortunately you can’t then report them to the PON. To avoid losing those funds, you take in expenses that you have already made on other programs and try to report as much as possible. So you’re saving time. We on the Pon have also brought money from the development and cohesion funds. From the metropolitan city we have recovered seven million, which we will use for other things. Extrabudgetary funding programming is never an exact picture. Messina did not lose 19 million. The loss is when you don’t tender the work and they revoke your funding.”
A tender to design the structure of the I-hub
The idea of mayor Basile and manager Puccio is to launch a tender to design the structure of the I-hub once the demolitions in the area have been completed. A center which, also on an aesthetic level, should become a sort of “welcome” door to Messina, with an architecture that enhances it. Not very far from the university area of the former Bank of Italy.
