The mayor of Murcia opens his hand with minor contracts in the districts

The PSOE-Ciudadanos government coalition in the Murcia City Council, which has been in charge of the municipal executive for almost two years thanks to a motion of censure, experienced moments of high voltage and tensions this Thursday afternoon. The reason is the proposal of the mayor of Murcia, the socialist José Antonio Serrano, to modify the instruction to process minor contracts in the City Council: it will not be mandatory to request three budgets or offers to carry out works and services with a value of less than 3,000 euros. Until now, the ceiling was set at only 1,000 euros and everything that exceeded that amount had to go through the triple offer and the supervision of municipal technicians when it was awarded.

This initiative, which must be discussed and approved at the municipal Governing Board this Friday, represents a jug of cold water for one of the main workhorses of the deputy mayor and councilor for Infrastructure, Contracting and Development, Mario Gómez: since it was made With these functions, he has defended the need to minimize minor contracts, popularly known as ‘finger-picking’ awards.

It remains to be seen if this proposal is going to lead to a breach of trust between the two government partners, which could even end in a rupture of the coalition just under four months after the holding of the municipal and regional elections.

“There is no crisis”

Municipal sources wanted to make it clear that the Governing Board “is the main contracting body and is chaired by the mayor, so he has full power to make proposals” and changes he deems appropriate. They also stressed that “there is no government crisis, although some would like to.”

The contractual limitation established at 1,000 euros has meant, on a day-to-day basis, a reduction in the autonomy of neighborhood associations in districts when it comes to carrying out any minor work necessary in the town, such as fixing a curb or a sidewalk; change some tiles, repair a pothole or make some arrangement in the schools. And it has raised many complaints from the villagers for feeling that they were ‘tying their hands’ and for verifying that necessary works in their territories were slow to be awarded and executed.

When the change in the model in minor contracting in the districts was made public, it was estimated that between 4,500 and 5,000 projects of this type were processed per year in the neighborhood councils. This meant that the municipal technicians had to review more than twenty proposals every day; then prepare the file with a budget for the pedáneo to request the three mandatory offers.