This morning the municipal council resolved to update the municipal tariffs for the use of sports facilities and school gyms.
The provision, which arrives at the council after a long process of sharing which also involved the Sports Council, modifies a system which has been standing still for some time and is no longer adequate for the current needs of managers and users, simplifying and rationalizing the list of items.
Although the management costs of the facilities have increased significantly in recent years, the Administration, also following the indications emerging from the sports clubs represented in the Consulta, will not intervene to increase the tariffs for the user clubs with the sole exception of school gyms for which an average increase of 0.65 euros per hour is expected, while the rates for training and championship matches in public facilities will remain unchanged.
The rates for the use of sports facilities by high schools will be rationalized, which until now have varied from one facility to another with an expected average increase of €1.66 per hour. In addition, an increase in the rate for renting facilities for special events will be expected, especially considering the costs for cleaning the facilities and their regulation following the sports reform.
Finally, the rate for the use of football pitches by amateur users will also be adjusted, going from 50 to 55 euros per hour for use without artificial light.
“It was a long job – comments the Sports Councilor Francesco Rossello – for which I thank the Sports Council for its fundamental and constructive contribution as well as the Sports Office which had to carry out a delicate job of selecting, merging or eliminating the tariffs now disused or redundant. To give a reference, the text of the tariff was 60 pages, while the one we will submit to the Council is reduced to 44. Beyond rationalization, which will in any case allow users to orient themselves better and have more clarity, it should be underlined that, even after this intervention, our Municipality will continue to offer rates among the lowest in the province”.
“I consider the choice not to penalize the user sports clubs, all returning from a period of economic suffering, to be politically relevant and qualifying, maintaining the costs for their use of the facilities unchanged. At the same time, this choice could not end up penalizing the managers, also represented by amateur sports clubs. For this reason, we decided to intervene on those items that had not undergone adjustments for the longest time and which were significantly lower than those of other bodies”, underlines the councilor.
“In this regard, I would like to focus on the increase in the cost of facilities for high schools, which is objectively the most important intervention we have made. The goal was to adjust the rates that have remained unchanged for several years, without excessively penalizing the schools. For this reason, we decided not to accept the proposal to standardize the rates of municipal facilities to those applied by the province for high school gyms, which is on average 15 euros per hour. Even if we bring our rate to 8 euros, the cost of municipal gyms still corresponds to half of that applied by the province for the gyms it manages”, concludes Rossello.
