«Less than a year ago, increases in the municipal tax had already been received: while the Mayor repeated the mantra of not having established any increase, the territorial group of the 5 Star Movement pointed out to him that his administration, unlike the choices made by the commissioner prefecture Francesco Alecci, had not confirmed the TARI concessions to support families in difficulty.
A few months later, history repeats itself, but this time the Mayor and his majority have chosen to dip into the municipal coffers to absorb an increase ordered by the Regulatory Authority for Energy, Networks and the Environment (ARERA). The move, however, does not seem particularly smart because, while it is true that citizens will not see an increase in the annual tax, it is equally true that they will benefit from 1.2 million euros less in services that could have been allocated to the care of greenery or the restoration of road surfaces.
But these costs will not be able to weigh on municipal coffers for long: sooner or later the time will come to increase the Tari as has already happened, without great fanfare, in other Italian cities and in BAT itself. A further outlay of around 2.5 million is already on the horizon due to a measure from the Puglia Region rejected by the Council of State.
So what can be done? A lot, as explained in the City Council by representatives of the Democratic Party and Civic Coalition and as has long been supported by environmental associations such as Italia Nostra, Legambiente and WWF. First of all, we need to switch to a pay-as-you-throw system, which rewards families who increase recycling and reduce landfill disposal. It has been demonstrated that in municipalities where pay-as-you-throw is applied, excellent results have been achieved, not only in terms of environmental and health protection, but also financially, with a reduction in disposal costs. In Barletta, however, waste sorting is struggling: citizens are fed up because their good will in recycling is not rewarded, on the contrary…
Then a serious fight against tax evasion is needed, prosecuting all those crafty people (and there are many) who manage to evade paying the city tax: if everyone pays, the expense per family will be significantly lower.
These are available solutions already implemented in other cities: instead the only solution proposed by the Center-Right to solve the problem would be the construction of new incinerators to “close the waste cycle”. We are honestly surprised to see them alongside angry citizens when it comes to fighting for the environment, to then boycott innovative collection models and ask for the construction of new combustion plants only to then raise the barricades when they are built “on our doorstep”. The 5 Star Movement in many Italian municipalities has promoted initiatives that go in this direction. We respond to the new landfills and new incinerators proposed by the Barletta centre-right with timely pricing and the fight against tax evasion and we are certain that many among political forces, associations and ordinary citizens are willing to work with us to achieve this result . We respond to the ecological aberrations proposed by the Cannito administration and its majority with specific, measurable and implementable proposals that go in the direction of protecting the environment, health and safeguarding our future.”
