The mayor of Mealhada, António Jorge Franco, advocated at the Monday council meeting an urgent amendment to the Local Finance Law, considering that municipalities assumed significant financial and operational effort in executing investments from the Recovery and Resilience Plan that were the responsibility of the Central Administration. According to the mayor, without the involvement of the Municipal Councils, the Central Administration would not have fulfilled the RRP as it did.
The Municipality of Mealhada accounts for investments of around 10 million euros, mainly in education and health areas, with emphasis on the requalification of Basic School nº2 in Mealhada and the health extensions of Mealhada, Luso, Vacariça and Pampilhosa. The investment also included interventions in terms of accessibility and social projects.
António Jorge Franco acknowledged that the concentration of resources in executing the RRP constrained other municipal investments, but considered that the funding opportunity could not be wasted. In the health area, he highlighted the intervention in Pampilhosa, where it was not possible to achieve the full execution initially planned, although a set of works will continue to advance.
The mayor argued that the RRP experience should serve to re-evaluate the current municipal funding model, considering that many municipalities have financial capacity below that of major urban centers, despite the increase in responsibilities assigned to them. He concluded that it is not possible to demand increasingly more responsibilities from municipalities without giving them the financial capacity to respond to those demands.
