Il Municipality of Castellanza relies on a declaration of the deputy mayor Cristina Borrroni the response to the TAR ruling that partially annuls the resolution with which the administration entrusted Ala with the management of waste collection starting from last May 2: «With reference to the news spread by the press on the recent TAR ruling regarding the assignment to ALA, I would like, also on behalf of the entire Municipal Administration, first of all to reassure the citizens that the service continues to be carried out without any interruption. We are examining the merits of the TAR ruling, which does not contain negative evaluations regarding the choice for the in-house model and we wish to underline that all the evaluations are underway for initiate the procedures necessary for the positive resolution of the case in the appropriate places.”
In all likelihood, therefore, there will be an appeal to the Council of State by the Municipality to obtain a reversal of the administrative judges’ ruling and not have to redo the award procedure.
The opposition is talking about a mess that could have been avoided: «The city is now facing a serious problem: the Regional Administrative Court (TAR) of Milan has accepted the appeal presented by EcoNord, annulling the direct assignment of the service to Aemme Linea Ambiente (ALA) and requiring the administration to redo the procedure for awarding the service. The TAR judged the procedure applied by the Municipality in the transfer of the service from Sieco to Amga to be incorrect. This mistake invalidated the agreement, leaving the city without a certain manager for waste collection. Or, better, with the need to redo the assignment procedure. In the meantime, Aemme Linea Ambiente will continue to manage the service, because a public service like waste collection cannot be interrupted. But it will be a halved service, because the investments that were planned will probably be suspended pending definitive pronouncements with the consequence that the hoped-for improvements in the quality of service will have to wait».
At the time of the award, the centre-right had highlighted various critical issues «first of all that relating to the personnel who had to move from Sieco to Amga – which clearly represented how the procedure had been carried out hastily and, according to the TAR ruling , superficial. Beyond the merit of the technical issues that are at the basis of the stop to the contract decided by the administrative justice, a fact of a political nature clearly emerges: the transition from the in-house service carried out by Sieco to the one, always in-house, carried out was managed inappropriately by Aemme Linea Ambiente.”
The opposition then complains how «the information sessions in the City Council were carried out without giving the possibility of examining the issue in depth and without providing adequate answers to the doubts highlighted by the minorities and in the face of the doubts of the Center Right the Participiamo list responded by shrugging and moving forward on your own path. Wrong way, apparently.”
What will happen now? The centre-right councilors ask for Castellanza: «Certainly more money will have to be spent to deal with the legal case and, probably, to repeat at least part of the procedure. The result could be overturned by a possible appeal to the Council of State, but in this case it would be even more evident that if the assignment procedure had been prepared with greater care, avoiding leaving room for possible appeals, this costly setback could have been avoided. : we’ll see what happens. We hope that at least this time everything will be done with greater attention, also because an extremely important service is at stake due to its environmental impact and the decorum of the city, the costs of which fall on the citizens.”
