Bleeding bills, the mayors: services at risk (schools, swimming pools, buses and street lamps)

Rome, 10 February 2022 – The mayors of the Italian municipalities have turned off the lights of squares and monuments of the whole peninsula tonight for the expensive-bills and they present the increasingly high bill to the government. To face the surge of prices we need at least one billion euros to date, provided that i costs dell’energy do not grow further.
The alternative to the state contribution is dry and the first citizens made it explicitly understood: it will be inevitable to reduce public lighting and municipal services (from schools Everyone poolgive her gyms ai offices) and cut the expenses of other chapters of the budgets (from those for the welfare to the transport), up to possible increases in the taxation locale (Imu, countries and so on). “With public lighting, Italian municipalities give the whole country – warns the President of Anci and mayor of Bari, Antonio Decaro -. But, without refreshments, the rise in bills could not only shut down our cities, but have repercussions also on budgets and essential services “.

Enrico Letta e Matteo Salvini push the executive to launch the new bill-saving decree announced by the premier as soon as possible Mario Draghi and which the technicians of the Ministry of Economy to bring him to the Council of Ministers next week. But the 5-7 billion at stake must also include the resources to be allocated to Common and at Regions struggling with an unprecedented emergency. Within the ANCI, they drew the first sums and the accounts are dramatic.

The expense for theelectric energy amounts to almost 1.7 billionto which others are added 450 million such as service contracts for public lighting. The request for support made to date of 550 million euros corresponds to an increase on an annual basis of 33% on the estimated value of 1.7 billion euros. If we go to the individual cities, for Roma e Milano this is 50 million more, 30 million for Naples e Torinobetween 13 and 15 million missing for Genoa, Palermo e Bologna. Up to 3 million euros for a medium-large city like Novara.

All this without considering the gas, the total cost of which for the Municipalities is approximately 540 million euros per year. “An estimated increase of 30% – insists Decaro – would not allow us to close the balance sheets and we may be forced to cut essential servicesstarting with public lighting which also plays a fundamental role in terms of urban security “. The former Minister of Economy, Roberto Gualtieritoday Mayor from Roma: “If there is no support or compensation, the Municipalities enter into a difficult situation. We expect that, in the face of yet another tile that has hit our budgets, the government will intervene in the next decree by allocating sufficient resources” . And medium-sized cities also suffer. “The cost of energy is expected to rise by more than 30% for each single municipality, for Venice it has already been hypothesized to amount to an additional cost of 4 million euros”, urges the mayor Luigi Brugnaro.
The point is that already this month we are well beyond the estimated increases. The price of electricity in the first three months of the year doubled (+ 55%) and gas did slightly less (+ 41.8%). Hence, therefore, the estimate of a mark-up in the financial statements of over one billion euros.
But the sums of the damage from expensive energy would be partial in the public sector if the effects on the bills of the Regions were not added together. “The Emilia-Romagna Region – explains the president Stefano Bonaccini – has estimated that, with this increase in energy bills, for public health alone there may be an increase between 30 and 40 million euros in 2022″.

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