MERANO. The average increase in the bill for the waste removal service that will hit every user starting this year will be 9%, or just under twenty euros. A real bloodbath, likely to be confirmed at least for 2025 as a result of what the top management of the Municipalized Company defines as a real revolution introduced by ARERA, or the Single National Regulatory Authority for Energy, Networks and the Environment.
In short, the costs of waste disposal will fall entirely on the taxpayer with rates defined by the new regulatory authority.
In the city council
Last week, in the city council, to explain what the entry into operation (also in Alto Adige, albeit with a two-year delay compared to the rest of the national territory) of this agency that will basically decide the rates for this service will entail, the director of ASM Patrick König and the consultant Samuele Zanardello arrived.
The explanation of the super expert was impeccable, speaking bluntly of an “epochal paradigm shift that must be managed appropriately to prevent tariffs from exploding in the future”, in short his speech.
What changes
But let’s go in order. First of all, the Municipality will no longer be able to play on the service rates and in this perspective ASM will have to provide for the maximum efficiency of the urban waste collection system as well as the citizen to the maximum care in the differentiation of domestic waste. Reducing the costs of the service, quality differentiation and reduction of illegal deposits, the guidelines of ASM. As mentioned, the system for determining the costs of the service will completely change, no longer and as now determined on future forecasts but on what happened in the past. “Planning, and well, will become so strategic to avoid stumbling into increases decided by ARERA for mistakes made in the past”, the expert’s warning. Specifically, ARERA thus enters forcefully into the relationship between the Municipality and ASM, imposing quality standards in the services with penalties and the possibility for citizens to assert a series of rights contained in the specific Service Charter. For its part, ASM will be obliged to qualitatively (and not only quantitatively) monitor the recovery of (differentiated) materials on the basis of specific community parameters to which it will have to align itself.
The financial plan
In order to determine the financial plan, ASM will have to prepare a document each year based on the previous two-year budget, submit it to the Province, which, using an advisor, will validate its coherence. The City Council will only have to take note of it, before sending the document to ARERA, which may request changes even after two years. For this reason, as announced by the expert, the importance of timely planning by ASM. Among other new features, in the fixed rate that will constitute, together with the variable rate, the amount paid by each user, there will also be an amount of 10 cents/year to cover the costs of recovering waste at sea, but also 1.5 euros/year to cover exceptional costs due to natural disasters. Finally, and as anticipated, the sore points for citizens. In fact, for the current year the inflation update of 13.3% will come into effect, but which, in agreement with ARERA, will translate into an increase for now of only 9.5% in the bill. An increase that ARERA could also impose for the 2025 tariffs, if ASM fails to demonstrate the ability to bring the budget into a situation of economic-financial equilibrium. In fact, every two years ARERA will ask to balance in the ASM budget the costs incurred that for 100% will have to be supported by the users’ bills, without any more possibility for the Municipality to open the classic wallet. The question, all political of course, is whether the double collection system (door to door and autonomous delivery) implemented by ASM in the city is functional to the new regulatory and tariff system imposed by ARERA. “This is a decision that is up to politics”, the expert concludes.
2024-09-08 04:16:32