The Castellón City Council will have a municipal budget for 2025 in a few weeks, according to the local government’s forecasts of approving the accounts “in time” so that they come into force at the beginning of the year. They will approve them alone again, as expected, the municipal groups of PP and Vox in the local government and in which the mayor, the popular Begoña Carrasco wanted to reserve an important amount of nearly 800,000 euros to settle a ‘debt’ incurred by the Fadrell Agreement “with the educational community.”
They warn that the predecessors of the current bipartite ‘forgot’ “during the entire last mandate” to execute some “very important investments, aimed at guaranteeing the continuity of public schools” in the capital of La Plana. All of this “despite being contemplated in the Participatory Budgets 2019″, as municipal sources have explained to EL MUNDO.
This is how, after having increased the annual allocation for maintenance tasks in the city’s schools by 60% in the accounts for this financial year, which is about to be completed, until the endowment reaches close to 1 million euros, The 2025 municipal budget will include a powerful investment line.
For now, this year’s increase has allowed the council to “have more money to equip educational centers and that students, teachers and the educational community in general have the best infrastructure,” as Carrasco stated when announcing this decision.
Next year, in addition, the newly created item aims to carry out “actions beyond the maintenance” of the Early Childhood and Primary Schools such as “renewing doors or windows” or carrying out improvements always aimed at reinforcing security in educational centers, for example in playgrounds.
Likewise, they have assured that this budget line will be maintained in the subsequent budgets for the years 2026 and 2027, that is, until the current mandate ends, to guarantee the execution of the actions in all the schools that require it and that cannot be carried out throughout the year 2025. It is, as the bipartite emphasizes, one more example of the “sensitivity” of the local government towards the educational community with actions valued at up to 250,000 euros, in the case of the school Sanchis Yago and others such as those valued at 75,000 euros in the Bernat Artola.
It should be remembered that in February 2019, the Department of Citizen Participation led by the spokesman for the nationalist coalition, Ignasi Garcia, activated the call Decidim Castelló for the 2019 Participatory Budgets. There were 114 initiatives presented by different groups, AMPAS, associations and also individuals. As announced at the time, “the initiatives presented vary between very specific and simple proposals to ambitious and innovative projects, from improving educational facilities and parks, facilitating mobility, or even recovering the Portal de l’Om.” 10 proposals ended up being successful, the winners of the 47 initiatives that obtained the necessary endorsements to move on to the study phase and in which the City Council planned to invest 1,650,000 euros.
Among the most voted was the rehabilitation of the school Antonio Armelles“a center that is more than 40 years old” and “needs” urgent reforms, starting with the bathrooms and ending with the patio”, as stated in the argument to find a place in that edition.
At that time, citizens through the Decidim Castelló platform also claimed works in other schools such as Sanchis Yago, Armelles, Castàlia, Jaume I, Vicente Artero, Bisbe Climent, Manel Garcia Grau, Bernat Artola or Vicent Marçà.
The latter would end up being the first Pla Edificant project in the province that started in 2020 with a budget of €390,368.02 and in others, the reforms were put out to tender years later, such as Sanchis Yago or Manel Garcia Grau.
In March 2023, two months before losing the elections, the Fadrell Agreement (PSPV, Compromís y Podemos-EUPV) was still studying to submit to the Ministry of Education the request to incorporate into the Edificant plan, in a second phase, “the comprehensive reform and rehabilitation of the Antonio Armelles, Bisbe Climent, Cervantes, San Agustín and Carles Selma schools”, and of key actions such as “expand the Jaume I patio and renew and expand the Soler y Godes dining room”, to which a new sports pavilion would be added.
Weeks ago, the PSPV reproached the current local government for not making any moves. Meanwhile, the bipartite had already begun to weave next year’s municipal budget in which these works will gain ground. “And those that we cannot execute in 2025 will be guaranteed until the end of the mandate,” municipal sources assure.
