«We are evaluating together with the lawyers how to proceed, examining the contents of the TAR sentences, but it is our intention to appeal to the Administrative Justice Council». For now, Mayor Federico Basile has not uttered more than these words, in the aftermath of the TAR’s pronouncements on the appeals presented by the Municipality against the authorizations issued by the Single Zes Mission Structure to the two Zanklon projects which, originally, had been canceled by the municipal council. Appeals rejected, with a substantial green light for the student residences which should be built, in derogation of the limits of the master plan, behind the Archimede high school, on viale Regina Margherita, and between via Bergamo and via Catania.
But the doubts about the whole affair are unanimous and of all political colours. Both at the time of the long debate in the Council and now among the most “fierce” is Alessandro Russo, now group leader of the Democratic Party: «It is a sentence that intervenes heavily on urban planning matters which, as is known, is a field of administrative action typically of the Municipalities – claims Russo -. A decision that opens the door to a marked compression of the autonomy of local authorities.” In short, the Municipalities can grant exemptions, because it is the Municipalities that decide if and when they can be useful to the territory. But according to Russo it is the whole affair that raises “very strong doubts, which the Administration must not ignore”. The representative of the Democratic Party recalls how in 2025 the services conference had established that the last word belonged to the city council, “which should have established whether or not there was a public interest sufficient to accept the variation to the construction criteria”.
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