2023-11-20 18:39:57
The rag is burning within the community of communes of Albères, Côte Vermeille and Illibéris located in the extreme south of the Pyrénées-Orientales. Friday evening, the plenary session turned into a domestic scene between President Antoine Parra, PS mayor of Argelès-sur-Mer and Nicolas Garcia, communist mayor of Elne.
“We residents of Elne are hated by the president. We have only had problems and unpleasant surprises since I refused to vote for him for president of the community of communes. He siphoned off our community’s investment budget of 8 million euros for the almost exclusive benefit of his city. He changed the allocation rules to install a first-come, first-served system to finance his own projects,” assures Nicolas Garcia.
The mayor of Elne left Friday’s plenary session with community elected officials with a bang. And he threatened to leave the community and quickly take this request to the prefect of the Pyrénées-Orientales. “I am not in favor of divorce but we must be respected. That’s the lesser of it. He took most of the 8 million budget to be distributed among all the municipalities. And to finance projects that are typically Argelesian, such as the city’s protective dike or the renaturation of the heart of the village,” accuses Nicolas Garcia, who lists the numerous grievances he accuses of his community adversary.
“No comment” from Antoine Parra
“We are the second city in the territory with almost 10,000 inhabitants and we have the 14th position of vice-president. It’s a way of despising, of offending the population of our city even if I don’t stick to protocol. It’s not even a political matter, it’s poor human management of the situation,” says Nicolas Garcia, also first vice-president of the Pyrénées-Orientales departmental council.
Questioned this Monday about this quarrel, Antoine Parra himself indicated that he would not make any comments and that the community had not issued any press releases on the quarrel on Friday evening.
But territorial divorce is a long way of procedures. Before declaring the departure of a municipality, it is necessary to obtain a favorable opinion, if possible, from the departmental commission for intermunicipal cooperation assembled for this purpose. After this advisory opinion, it is the prefect who decides. At the end of this course, Elne could join the community of communes of Sud Roussillon (six communes), whose president is Thierry Delposo, the mayor of Saint-Cyprien.
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