“Molina’s baristas are very pissed off,” say the local restaurateurs, after the Molinense City Council returned at the beginning of this week to send them the payment letters in application of the ordinance regulating the rate for the use or special use of public roads with tables and chairs for profit.
Due to the health crisis, in 2021 and 2022 the application of this tax was suspended, which led the Consistory to stop entering about 75,000 euros for this concept. After two years without paying a euro to occupy the terraces, the businessmen now receive the receipts and some are incredulous.
«There are more important things in Molina and the situation is not good. This rate represents almost nothing, but it makes us a world not to pay it, ”laments Juan Efrén Delgado, president of the Molina Gastronomic Association. According to the ordinance, establishments pay about 125 euros per year for a table and four chairs. That is, a place that has declared ten tables with four chairs each, will pay more than 1,200 euros a year.
“In the Region of Murcia, the terraces are the joy of the streets and the suspension of this tax should have been extended to 2023,” he says. Delgado is confident that the new government will eliminate this tax, although he sees it as “difficult” to compensate for this year’s, since the receipts have arrived through the Treasury area.
Eliminate the fee
For his part, the mayor, José Ángel Alfonso, who took office yesterday, has among his proposals the elimination of the occupancy rate for public roads, as it appears in his electoral program, which he promised to comply with before a notary . The outgoing mayor of the Treasury, José de Haro, considers that “the rate can be zero”, but points out that “it is something fair because they are profiting on public roads.”
Municipal support for the small business, hospitality and nightlife sector by the City Council materialized with the suspension of said rate, but also with boost aid packages to alleviate the economic losses caused by the covid. In 2020, the Molina de Segura City Council launched the Revitalization and Contingency Plan for businesses and hoteliers, endowed with 200,000 euros, which included various lines of aid and incentives for job creation, investment in equipment and local business promotion campaigns.
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