In Marseille, "public money was wasted", criticizes mayor Benoît Payan - France 24

Marseilles (AFP)

"Public money has been wasted, thrown away, sold off": the socialist mayor of Marseille Benoit Payan blasted Tuesday the "catastrophic" financial legacy left by the right on the occasion of the delivery of an audit ordered after the victory from the left to the municipal ones.

"This balance sheet (...) is a poorly managed debt, sold off assets, waste in unnecessary events, huge investments badly negotiated (...) empty coffers and abandoned Marseillais. It was a secret. open but it is now becoming a fact duly analyzed and documented ", explained the city councilor, presenting the audit to the press alongside several of his deputies.

This document should feed into the city's budget orientation debate scheduled for Monday in city council, before the budget vote set for March 22.

In November 2019, the regional chamber of accounts had already drawn up a vitriolic assessment of the management of the former mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin (LR), at the head of the city for 25 years, "but his analysis stopped at accounts of 2017, "said the deputy mayor in charge of finance, Joël Canicave, according to whom the situation worsened further over the following three years.

The main black point pointed out by the audit, carried out by the firm Deloitte, concerns the very limited investment capacity of the city, weighed down by a debt quantified at the end of 2020 at 1.54 billion euros.

At the end of 2019, according to the audit, the city only had 13 million euros in its coffers to invest - even negative self-financing capacity, at -20 million euros, in the 2020 budget, according to Joël Canicave .

The Covid crisis did not help municipal finances with additional expenses amounting to 100 million euros.

"We cannot accept this decline, resign ourselves to austerity. We will raise this city," however assured Benoît Payan.

"No more lavish spending, bling bling and sequins. We know our priorities: school, housing, the environment and then, cleanliness and transport," he recalled.

And no question to carry out this program to borrow at all costs.

"The city's debt should not have increased at the end of the term," explained Joël Canicave.

In this context, the sensitive issue of increasing taxes remains unresolved.

"We will not do anything that damages the social fabric of Marseille," promised Benoît Payan.

Deploring "extremely narrow fiscal maneuver margins", the mayor blasted the past management of the right which "crushed the Marseillais with an unfair housing tax that everyone (paid) leaving the property tax, one of the weakest in France, in a vegetative state ".

The mayor of Marseille hopes to be able to benefit from external aid: from the department, the region, investors and especially the State, and specifies that he wants to meet the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron.

© 2021 AFP