The plenary of Calp City Council has approved the city's recruitment plan for 2021. This is the first document with these characteristics that the City Council has prepared, considering the needs of the different municipal departments for contracts to be tendered this year.
This plan will be implemented in accordance with the Public Sector Regulation Act, which establishes the legal obligation for all public administrations to operate according to the principles of planning, goal-oriented management, control, and assessment of public policy results. It will also facilitate business participation and greater transparency in administration.
The mayor of Calp, Ana Sala, stressed the importance of having an instrument with these characteristics, which will allow "better planning, organisation, transparency and information" of the council's activity, stressing that "there are not many municipalities that have such an instrument".
For the development of the plan, the different departments submitted more than 400 files with the needs of the tender for this year. Among the tenders included in the document are the project to redesign the Plaza Mayor to better redistribute this square, which is the venue for many events in the city; the elaboration of the project to rehabilitate the La Fossa promenade; measures to revitalise Vallesa and Enginent Parks; or the elaboration of the project to rehabilitate the access to the emergency room of the Health Centre. It also includes the commissioning of a translation service into Valencian for all official municipal documents, among many others.
This plan, which is not binding, is subject to the processing of each tender document and the availability of adequate and sufficient credit. The plan was approved with the votes of the government team (PP and Ciudadanos) and Compromís and the abstention of PSOE and Defendamos Calpe.
The plenary also agreed to ask the Generalitat Valenciana to accredit Calp as a tourist municipality of the Valencian Community, in accordance with the new Consell decree that will be approved in 2020 and will tighten the criteria for a city to be recognised as a tourist municipality. This new decree requires the city to participate in the Generalitat's promotional programmes as a Smart Tourist Destination or Tourism Quality, among others, in addition to meeting requirements such as tourist population, number of tourist accommodations and second homes, among others. The council is now applying for its renewal as a smart tourism municipality because it believes it meets all these new requirements. It will now be the Generalitat that will evaluate Calp's application. This point was approved unanimously.
On the other hand, it was agreed to clarify the objections raised and to provisionally approve specific amendment D-13 to PGOU-98 to improve the environment and cultural heritage of the urban land of La Manzanera. This is another step in the government team's effort to protect the last pristine piece of coastal land in Calpe. It is a plot of 10,000 square metres that is buildable and for which permission could be sought, leading to the decision to move the buildability to other green spaces in the same La Manzanera complex.
Defendamos Calpe spokesperson Paco Quiles accused the government team of incoherence and of having wasted the opportunity to protect 250,000 square metres of the Pla Feliu, Ràfol and Garduix area.
Compromís spokesperson Ximo Perles showed his support for the protection of the pine forest, but insisted that development at zero cost was not possible. "All the buildability of this land will now be redistributed to other land. In other words, in order to protect one area, the rest of the areas are being massively overcrowded."
The spokesman for the municipal group of the Social Democrats, Santos Pastor, was also on the same line, saying, "We understand that the pine forest itself has some value, but the cost of protecting this pine forest means giving up the rest of La Manzanera"
Ciudadanos spokesman and Councillor for Territory, Juan Manuel del Pino, stressed that this project "with the specific amendment to D-13 is something extraordinary because in very few places on the Mediterranean coast will it be possible to protect an area of 10,000 square metres right on the beach". And he recalled that at the beginning of the legislature, a licence application was submitted to build eight blocks of four heights in the area. "We had decided that it was worthwhile to preserve this area and turn it into a green space," she added.
Mayor Ana Sala raised the question, "What would have happened if we had not raised this proposal and started this macro project in the making on the last untouched piece of land on the Calp coast?" and accused the opposition groups of mixing different issues. "Let's not mix the redevelopment of Club Social, the regeneration of the coast, the jetty, with the modification of D-13 or the areas of Ràfol, Pla Feliu and Garduix; each proposal will be dealt with when appropriate," he said.
On the other hand, with the only votes in favour of the government team and the opposition against, it was decided to reject the appeals for reconsideration filed against the plenary agreement of 13 July 2020, which approved the action programme for the construction of a building with 19 heights and the land consolidation project of the area where it will be located, in Ponent Street, in La Calalga.