A conversation with the mayor Giusy Caminiti after Wednesday's operational confrontation with the “Strait of Messina” hosted by Palazzo San Giovanni, to which, in addition to the mayor and the CEO of the company, Pietro Ciucci, municipal officials were also present. The heart of the meeting is the steps that are marking the path towards the Bridge, with a more in-depth focus on the expropriation issue which the Villese community is looking at with apprehension, especially that part directly interested in the measures.
On the sidelines of the meeting with the CEO Pietro Ciucci, he spoke of “tailored” adaptation to the needs of the citizens involved in the expropriations. What kind of feedback on this front?
«The expropriations are the key theme of the confrontation between the administration and the “Strait of Messina”. Out of three thousand companies between Calabria and Sicily, 150 homes should be expropriated in Villa, of which around 50 are first homes. We can only continue to ask the company for particular attention which, during the meeting, for the first time, we received. The desire for a “tailored” adaptation to the needs of citizens has been grasped, in the sense that each expropriation will be treated individually, not with a generalization. We will look at what to do house by house so that alternative solutions can also be adopted: evaluating whether the demolition of a property can be avoided because, for example, it does not fall within the construction site area in the strict sense, whether an expropriation can be replaced by employment with therefore, then, a refund, analyze each situation. Even a single house saved from expropriation is a citizen's need that is met. We have obviously re-proposed the problems linked to the right to housing, the decrease in value of artefacts in the immediate vicinity of the work and those that will suffer the shadow cone and those other “damage” profiles, clearly compensatory ex ante not ex post ».
What are the needs that the citizens involved most often bring to your attention?
«There is concern about the upheaval resulting from a construction site that does not know how long it will last and whether it will ever end. We fear the unfinished. After all, the “variant” speaks, for the city it is a wound that recalls biblical times in the implementation of even small interventions such as its masking, the redevelopment of the seafront. Other aspects from this perspective concern liveability within the urban perimeter: road conditions and therefore the area occupied by the Bridge together with the crossing to and from Sicily”.
