November 6 will finally be the final date for the official position taken by the municipal council of Ioannina regarding the retention or not of its four legal entities which will be abolished from the beginning of 2024, according to the new government law.
The newly elected mayor, Thomas Begas, tried to provoke a debate in the city council so that all factions could be positioned on it, but he did not succeed after the municipal authority insisted on a single debate on November 6.
The mayor, Dimitris Papageorgiou, referred to that meeting in order to present the positions of the municipal authority, which according to information want to preserve only the OKPAPA and not the Spiritual Center, the Painting Nursing Home and the Perama Cave, contrary to the opinion of the of a new municipal authority which wants all four legal entities to stay.
In any case, the decision of the municipal council, whatever it may be, has a purely advisory nature, as what happens next will be decided by the competent ministry.
But it is important what the municipal council will say as the municipality will be asked to document as best it can its positions on the preservation of the legal entities it chooses to preserve, in order to convince the ministry.
And all of this must happen by November 15, when the time the government has given the municipalities to submit their reasoned opinions expires.
The period of time is therefore quite narrow and for this reason Mr. Begas insisted that there be a first discussion, even with the procedure off the agenda, in the municipal council so that the House’s intentions are recorded and the direction is possibly given for the drafting of the explanatory reports to the municipal services, earlier than November 6, a date that the current municipal authority set as a milestone day for any decisions.
“You understand that the time frames are very narrow and I doubt, if the decision taken by the House on November 6 is to preserve all the legal entities of the municipality, how the competent services will have time to prepare the explanatory reports required,” said Mr. .Begas.
In this appeal, however, the current mayor called on all factions that are in favor of maintaining a legal entity to come with the explanatory report ready to the meeting on November 6, which of course is not at all easy to do by any faction, without knowing the necessary economic and technical data and data held by the municipality’s services.
In the discussion that took place in the municipal council, however, all factions were placed, without however clearly expressing themselves in favor of maintaining or not the legal entities of the municipality, as the conversation was never taken to this level.
Tatiana Kalogianni from the faction “Ioannina_2023” emphasized that the municipal authority should have presented its documented and fully quantified proposals to the municipal council, as she said, the outgoing and the new municipal authority have the knife and the melon.
Lazaros Natsis from the faction “Yoannina Polites for Overturning” disagreed with the following procedure which is proposed to take place within a suffocating framework and he also stood in favor of a preparatory debate in view of the 6th of the month.
The heads of the “People’s Rally” Oli Tsoumani and the faction “Left Intervention in Ioannina” Christos Patsouras emphasized that the issue is the safeguarding of jobs, the preservation of the services of the legal entities under abolition, under municipal control and whether in the end, there will be services from tomorrow with the concept of state funding.
Nikos Gondas, head of the “Independent Municipal Vanguard” faction, emphasized that the deadline of November 15 is a strange story, as the outgoing municipal authority is called upon to decide what regime will prevail in the next municipal term, something rather unorthodox. He also asked for a discussion in the first phase so that a decision can be made in a week.
The unorthodox nature of this conversation was also pointed out by Konstantina Zeka, president of the Ioannina OTA Employees’ Association, stressing that the permanent position of the workers is the unified expression.
In conclusion, only one clear position was heard in the municipal council for the four legal entities of the municipality, that of the “Citizens’ Unity of Nea Iannina” which spoke for their preservation. What is the position of the other factions will be known next week, when the meeting of the body will exclusively concern this issue.
