For the new majority of Villejuif, the question of the budget is one of the major concerns of this end of the year. During a press briefing preceding the City Council on Tuesday, Mayor Pierre Garzon (PCF) described the management of the finances of the commune by his predecessor as“Electoralist, insincere and illegal”. The elected official indicates to have made a report to the public prosecutor.
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“Day after day, we are discovering that Franck Le Bohellec’s management of public funds with due care was a myth. I had expressed my concerns during the municipal council of July 23, but we have since discovered accounts in the red. The outgoing mayor was sanctioned but it is now up to us to manage this situation ”, begins Pierre Garzon.
Little informed of the situation when it took office, the new municipal team learned by chance that certain lines of credit were exhausted. For example, it is impossible to ask the road service to carry out urban cleaning actions. “In normal times, the municipality under the old mandate paid around 35,000 euros per month in the cost of cleaning the roads. From September 2019, this amount began to increase to double until the elections. 900,000 euros of additional expenditure and today in the opposition, they attack us on the state of the streets ”, continues the mayor who refused to honor certain bills. Apart from cleanliness, the city council reports the consumption of a budget of 3 years of credits intended for work in just 18 months.
If we add several omissions from the 2020 provisional budget such as a slate of 180,000 euros in unpaid event costs, the cancellation of 476,000 euros in development tax or 734,000 euros in revenue titles, the town hall should now free up 1.5 million euros from its finances to be able to end the year with a minimum of means. “We owe our victory thanks to the mobilization of the youth of Villejuif, and, unfortunately, this mismanagement by Franck Le Bohellec will prevent us, until 2021, from being able to achieve the expenses that we had planned quickly after taking office: recruitment of staff in the city’s schools, re-launching of the reception centers for young people in the neighborhoods, etc. ”, summarizes Christophe Achouri, the finance assistant. Consequence, explain elected officials: investments have been postponed or canceled.
To put things straight, an audit was requested from the same cabinet requested by his predecessor in 2014. Pierre Garzon also indicated that he had made a report to the public prosecutor concerning the insincerity of the budget and the suspicions of his services as to the legality of certain arrangements.
“Whether you think this budget is, in your interpretation, insincere is your responsibility. For us it is not. Some amounts question me. (…) I can understand that we had small amounts to pay that would have been forgotten [mais pas de l’importance des volumes cités] (…) You blame us for a lot of things, I do not allow myself to make value judgments on what is being done but I pride myself on bringing the real elements of understanding of this budget ”, reacted in session Fadma Ouchard, member of the opposition and former assistant to education.
The budget modification was voted by the municipal majority. Seven opposition representatives from the assembled Villejuif list voted against. The two elected from the other group of opponents, Villejuif en grand, abstained.
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