«The Municipality of Vibo Valentia still has resources available for approximately 4 million euros from the Calabria Region which it will lose, forever, if they are not committed by 31 December 2025. The data emerges from a careful reading of the Stability Law and the Region’s budget proposal for the year 2025, but this detail risked going unnoticed, and the resources would have been wasted, if the point had not been clarified in the Budget Commission”.
Thus the regional councilor Antonio Lo Schiavopresident of the Mixed Group – Freely Progressives, on the sidelines of the last session of the Second Council Commission during which, by asking the General Manager of the Budget and Planning Department, Filippo De Cello, on the point, he raised the issue and had full assurance that the funds intended for Vibo Valentia can be recovered provided that the Municipality takes out a mortgage, of the corresponding value, by 31 December 2025. Mortgage which will obviously be covered from the Region.
«The question – summarizes Lo Schiavo – is posed in these terms: in 2007, following the flood of 3 July 2006, in the context of the “Connected to the Budget” (the then Stability Law), there was the will to find substantial funding for public works against hydrogeological instability to be carried out in the Municipality of Vibo Valentia. Since there were not many resources available, a system was devised which provided for a twenty-year regional contribution by covering the amortization installments of mortgages that the Municipality of Vibo Valentia would have to contract. Now, noting the relevant chapter in the 2025 budget, and after having carried out the relevant checks, I realized that the funding foreseen for the Municipality of Vibo Valentia was kept at 1.5 million for the year 2025 but for the following years For 2026 and 2027, it was expected to be reduced by 308 thousand euros (therefore to 1 million 192 thousand euros), a sign of the start of “decertification” of the contribution. Therefore, upon my request for clarification, the manager De Cello confirmed that the Municipality of Vibo Valentia still has time, until 31 December 2025, to spend all the residual resources and thus progressively recover all the sum not spent since 2007. If had this “anomaly” not emerged, Vibo Valentia would have lost this contribution forever and from 2026 the sum of 308 thousand euros would have been reduced forever from the original million and a half expected in the budget, given the peremptory deadline established by the art. 5 of the Stability Law, which also concerns the multi-year contribution for Vibo Valentia. Operationally, an immediate analysis of primary infrastructure needs is now necessary by the Municipality of Vibo Valentia with new interventions to be financed through mortgages which, naturally, will be completely borne by the Region. Vibo Valentia – concludes Lo Schiavo – absolutely cannot lose any resources and I am happy that with the study carried out and with the clarifications provided to me in the Budget Commission, the Administration of Vibo Valentia will be put in a position not to lose even a single euro of the financing originally foreseen”.