A restful morning characterized the autumn session of the Metropolitan Council, which held its meeting at the CUM yesterday.
The few verbal sparrings between Christian Estrosi and his opponents, whom the mayor of Nice brought together in an unprecedented alliance (PS/FN), have become a routine that allows members of this assembly, usually busy reading and writing their correspondence with modern technological tools, to take a fleeting glance at what is happening in the chamber.
It is true that the deliberations on the agenda were not of a nature to excite the spirits nor to demand much reactivity from the neurons.
The transfer of management of the transport service for people with reduced mobility confirmed the Colbertist vocation of the President of the Metropolis: The State is me, and here is this public service delegation that has fallen into his lap.
Similarly, the progress of the ZAC Nice-Méridia was merely a reminder regarding soft mobility. However, the response from Christian Tordo, the president of the EPA in charge of the operation, far exceeded the environmental concerns expressed by his representative, Fabrice Decoupigny. Once the new neighborhood is completed, we will all walk, pedibus calcantibus as in the good old days of consular roads that made Rome great.
The devil is in the details, as well-known to those who, neglecting this warning, find themselves in poor positions without sometimes even realizing it.
An exchange between rapporteur Philippe Pradal and Patrick Allemand about a quite marginal modification of the business property tax (800 euros more for companies with a turnover of over 5,000,000 euros) gave Christian Estrosi the opportunity to inflict upon us one of his pleas worthy of the rhetorician Cicero. Only, facing the president of the Metropolis, there was not the conspirator Catilina but the unfortunate (in this circumstance) Patrick Allemand who, in the eyes of his relentless accuser, embodied all possible faults: Socialist, First Vice President of the Regional Council, member of the party representing the President of the Republic, which ensures the (fragile) parliamentary majority that has made the former Minister Christian Estrosi an opposition deputy.
We thus had the flower of criticisms of a regional council that does not participate (and when it does, it delays payments) in the financing of operations that Christian Estrosi has launched and programmed for the development of “his” territory and, not to mention, a government that has reduced and will further reduce funding to local authorities.
The bill for the Metropolis will be 16 million euros in 2015 (out of an annual budget of about 1.2/1.3 billion euros) as part of the state budget cuts of 11 billion euros distributed over three years. A hefty bill that forced the President of the Metropolis to request a 10% reduction in operating expenses.
However, while it is true that figures can be interpreted and used to support an argument or its opposite, Christian Estrosi’s assertion, in his “crescendo” anti-Socialist claim, that these 11 billion must be recalculated to reach 29 due to the additive effect of the 3 annual partial fractions, resembles a triple leap without a safety net… of arithmetic!
It is true that the current government’s economic policy does not give the impression of a clear and coherent line and could be likened, more than a straight line, to a permanent zig-zag in search of better fortune.
However, it seems evident to us that even the verbal motor force of the metropolitan president cannot fuel this extravagance. Things will not get better by opposing zig-zags with a ditty.
Furthermore, the governments of the previous presidential term, in which he had a part, have also not left a great memory in terms of economic mastery, having deepened the state’s deficit by more than 600 billion.
