Municipality of Corfu: Budget increase for 2018 - increase in local taxes

All the necessary procedures have now been completed for the 2018 budget to finally come to the vote and the town council will be meeting today, Monday.

The budget for this year is 14 million Euros higher than last year, the Deputy Mayor for Finance, Georgios Pantelios, told Enimerosi. The total for this year is 94,400,000 compared to 80,000,000 last year.

The reason is that this year there are still unused funds from European development (ESPA) programmes and Public Investment programmes which will be added to the budget and used by the Municipality of Corfu. The Municipality’s income has also increased over the years as the number of those ‘liable for payment to the municipality’ has been extended. “Our aim is to spend the budget and for it not to just remain on the books, both as our obligation as a municipality and to benefit everyone,” Mr. Pantelios said.

What the Municipality spent last year

“The Municipality budgets are realistic now. We don’t rely on income that a municipality can’t collect. In 2017 we fulfilled all the programmes we had budgeted for with the exception of the technical programme. This was due to the fact that although we had completed the studies in all the separate departments, there was a ministerial decision to group all the projects together. That caused a delay and time was lost. When we present the account for the previous year, this will all be discussed.”

State funding and the technical programme

“We will receive 2,155,000 Euros funding from the State, just like last year. 700,000 will be deducted for commitments of the old local councils (before Corfu became one town council).

With 1,400,000 for the technical programme plus 125,000 from our own sources, we will carry out repair work on schools with another 400,000. Funding of 2 million Euros is also earmarked for road maintenance.

Approximately 1,200,000 will be used for maintenance of three buildings at Mon Repos. There are also some buildings in Corfu Town, Benitses harbour, Alipas harbour and some projects on the Diapontia Islands. In general, that is what is included in the technical programme.”

Municipal Taxes

“Regarding the increase in municipal taxes (lighting and cleaning taxes), the municipal cleaning department has told us that their operating costs have increased for two reasons: waste disposal costs the municipality 21 Euros per ton. Because of the different type of waste management that the cleaning service uses now, it costs 57 Euros per ton. The second reason is that the municipality has requested the recruitment of 190 workers for the services covered by the municipal taxes. At the moment there are 125 in the cleaning department, so we will need an extra 60 people. We are trying our best to keep costs down so as not to be a burden on the local taxpayer.”

Sport and Culture

We are funding an indoor gym in North Corfu which, including the planning study, will cost just under 1 million. It had been requested by local residents for a long time. In Corfu, most of the sporting facilities are unsuitable. The matter isn’t so much financial as bureaucratic,” Mr. Pantelios said and added that, “We have stated clearly in the budget that we want to support more activities in the field of sport and culture.”

How much of the budget can be used

“The 94 million includes 15 million for municipality debts from previous years. We are not legally allowed to collect the 15 million as income, so the total is reduced to approximately 80 million, of which approximately 7 million is collected through wages and contractors’ deductions, which are recorded as income and expenditure.

So the final amount which is available for use is approximately 73 million Euros.”