“The only possible approach is the institutional one which we have pursued from the beginning, up to the last letter cited, not only to ask for the suspension of the terms of the preliminary conference. Institutional approach means moving in synergy on situations that concern the development of the territory and we have done it together, Mayors and Municipalities of Reggio Calabria, Campo Calabro, Villa San Giovanni and Messina”.
The mayor of Reggio Calabria, Giuseppe Falcomata’, said this during the open city council meeting on the theme: “Bridge over the Strait, prospects and repercussions on Reggio Calabria and its metropolitan city”, which took place yesterday. In the “Battaglia” hall the civic assembly developed which recorded the reasons for the yes and the no to the work on the Strait.
The council has accepted the motions of parties, associations and unions, documents which will be recorded in the minutes and will then be published on the online noticeboard of the municipal administration. The mayor, during his speech, stigmatized the absence of the League, Fratelli d’Italia and Forza Italia who chose not to be present in the chamber.
In particular, the League which, despite not having councilors in the chamber, instructed the Prime Minister, Enzo Marra, to read a document. “A performance in absentia – the mayor defined it – an unjustified absence of someone who has an institutional task to represent the citizens within the highest forum and which instead manifests inconsistency and contradiction”.
In relation to the government regulations to be applied in the future, the mayor once again expressed the need to defend the exercise of peacefully expressing one’s dissent even with respect to major works: “Freedom that is being tried to be compressed with decrees law”.
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Falcomata’ spoke about the publication of the agreement for the increase of transport in the Strait area: “We have arrived at a single ticket, an increase in journeys and an improvement in connections to and from Reggio airport, to and from the port of Reggio and that of Villa, thanks to the commitment of Atm and Atam. And it is a sign of how much an institutional synergy can generate positive effects for the territory, even if evidently this is less newsworthy. Therefore we ask that the territories can be protagonists, with an involvement in the dynamics of comparison of the project – continued the mayor – but not out of favor, but because the proposals of the municipalities and municipal administrations following a debate with the territory can sit at a table, which doesn’t exist today, and bring the ideas of the territory. Up to now we have been substantially excluded.
Thus – according to Falcomata’ – the plan of respect and protagonism of the territories which comes before any ideological and technical approach has failed. We cannot suffer what is happening. Furthermore – added the mayor – the resources are not only not there and are insufficient, on the other hand they are taken away from the territories which are therefore not protagonists and lose preparatory resources for development, 2 billion and three hundred million euros of cohesion funds, taken away with a swipe of the towel and without concertation”.
In conclusion, Falcomata’ said, “as institutions we protect the needs of citizens, we will never say that we are against a public work, but in this case we say “no” with respect to how we got there, with respect to fragility , inconsistencies and inconsistencies that prevent us from any further type of debate”. During the debate, the interventions of the mayors of the cities affected by the work were recorded.
For Campo Calabro, mayor Sandro Repaci: “Everyone faced with such a complex issue has different ways of dealing with the problem – he highlighted – the final decision is up to the municipal councils. You can be for or against, but none of us were consulted. The bridge has been a topic held hostage by political skirmishes for years, at the time of decisions the administrations must express their opinion on the documents that are transmitted”. While not declaring himself for or against the work, Mayor Repaci clarified: “After the in-depth studies of the last few weeks, the procedures put in place demonstrate that the bridge is extremely fragile. In this condition of uncertainty we cannot guarantee the territories.”
For Villa San Giovanni, the mayor Giusy Caminiti explained: “We are the city of the impact of the work and we are aware that unfortunately the objective law of 2004 provided for a decision that might not involve the territories, we thought that there could be a decision taken differently. We expected that the politics that had restarted the work would demonstrate that the update of the 2013 project, which was not passed by CIPES, could exceed the requirements of the time, but this is not the case. There are 68 prescriptions from the Scientific Technical Committee, but compared to the many meetings there was much more. We have two preliminary conferences open for environmental, landscape and geomorphological impact. The work done, for which I also thank Falcomata’ as metropolitan mayor, allowed us to produce a document with which we asked for the suspension of the MIT investigative conference. It is clear that this is a difficult moment for the city of Villa which imagined different development hypotheses”.
