better understand the budgetary orientation debate with Jérémy Prévost

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The budgetary orientation debate (DOB), like voting on the budget, is a real exercise for the person presenting it. But how to explain to readers a very technical report carried out by elected officials for elected officials.

We asked to Jeremy Prevostvice-president in charge of finances of Flers Agglo, to redo the exercise in order to address to a wide audience. You will understand better.

“A shortfall of €400,000”

How to popularize a budgetary orientation debate, a very technical area?

It's an interesting exercise because typically, I think that budgetary orientation debate is inexplicable to residents. All the preparatory work, the technical work that we do upstream, is ultimately to see things on the ground.

The budgetary orientation debate, in reality, is quite simple: how do we finance our investments? How do we finance our projects? And, to finance our projects, there is a lot of work upstream: bringing in revenue, cutting expenses.

Among these, there is the daily public service. Are we recruiting or not? But also the choices to make in terms of investments.

Do you have an example?

Yes, even if it concerns more the town of Flers, but that doesn't matter. This is an example that people could see on a daily basis, with sports halls.

If we say to ourselves that our budget human resources is too fair, we can say that having one or two people retiring allows us to reduce the service. Maybe we stop going every day or every other day. We only come by once a week.

And there, straight away, people will see the difference in the à la carte openings of the sports halls, in the cleaning, in the lights and heating which are turned on at the right time. And not half an hour after everyone arrived.

That's an example that people don't see at all. However, before that it’s all HR and management and steering work. There are immediate consequences.

An equipment capacity of €16 million

So that's the part, daily operation. There may be the part investment. If we want to move on to the subject of the crematorium, if we want to finish the entrance to the town which will be rather nice at La Selle-la-Forge…

At the same time, we must be immediately able to monopolize money in two or three weeks straight away. This way, we are credible with companies. And for our markets, it's much simpler.

Then, when we knock on the door of the Regionof theEurope or Departmentwe arrive with marbles.

We have an equipment capacity of 16 million euros. We decide that, each year since the start of our mandate, we invest between four and six million euros. But we are also able to go to a crematorium, to go on lots of projects.

As you can see, I could list them all,city ​​entrance, the nursery. That was a project that was not yet in the pipeline a few weeks ago.

What is this project?

We are working on the total renovation of the nursery Farandole and, at the same time, we are studying another project on the nursery at the Pont-Féron. So, we try, with the constraints, in addition to the current government, to work, to do watchmaking, so that people see the outcome of the project.

But also that they do not see any impact on the sdaily public services and at the same time we do not use the easy solution of increasing taxes. We need to be able to have 2 million euros of investment capacity.

But we are calm. We are capable of doing a big project; we have an industry that is knocking on the door. We have acquired the land on Norman'Innov, we are able to respond. This is not the case for all communities.

In summary: no tax increase ; we are able to move on to projects straight away; we maintain our public services.

The Capfl'O aquatic center is doing quite well…

Yes, and we are going to recruit two lifeguards. We will still do some work to improve reception. We'll see that at the beginning of January.

We are capable of making this investment. But it is certainly the aquatic centerwhich works best in the Orne department.

What could be the consequences for the agglomeration's budget if the Barnier government's draft budget was finally validated?

For the agglomeration, overall, the finance bill was a consequence of around €400,000 in shortfall. €400,000 on a budget of €31 million in revenue . If every year we take a €400,000 hit, it will hurt.

Even if the finance bill has been set aside for the moment, it will come back. It's mandatory. I'm pretty sure of that. So which means that for us, it’s an impact of €400,000.

Can this be compensated?

No, for the moment, it is not at all, because there is no increase in revenues or even taxes. The Agglo recipe block, in fact, is super simple. We have 32 to 33 million euros in revenue. Public finance is divided into three.

Block one,taxes, 12 million euros. Out of 12 million euros, there are 800,000 euros that come from individuals.

Bloc 2four million come from businesses. You should know that there are communities where business tax hardly exists. We are fortunate to be an industrial territory, a commercial territory, so we do not have far from 4 million euros. Luck… and strategy, incidentally: it’s still the strategy that we develop. We can see that, straight away, it has a hyperpositive impact on our recipes.

Bloc 3we have the whole part of endowments, subsidies, everything that the State allocates to us, everything that is, I would say endowments: the DGF, city endowments, – finally the city of Flers for once – DSU – city of Flers also – everything that is state participation in our positions. Or even CAF on nurseries, the Normandy region… our different contacts.

“We have no right to the deficit”

And then the third item is the service products, so these are the revenues Capf’OTHE digital shower baths…It’s all service products. However, service products are still a minority. Moreover, the community does not survive because it makes a service profitable.

So, the recipes are simple. And, when there is one that works less well, notably that of state allocations, we look at the other two.

Are we increasing prices everywhere? We started at between 1 and 3% and we didn't increase everything. There are quite a few rates where we have frozen. And second point was taxes. And there, we said we weren't touching it.

What investments are planned for 2025?

It's still a little early. We will see that at budget time. There, with the budgetary orientation debate, the idea was that we give a line. The work is ultimately more interesting than other years.

For two months, with the services, we will see the priorities. Because, sometimes, we will have to cut certain things to earn €300,000 to €400,000.

The guideline? Since the start of the mandate, it has raised 2 million euros in self-financing. That is to say, at the end of the year, we must have 2 million euros left.

It makes you smile when we say that, because the State asks itself the question of how not be too much in deficit . And it is he who then hits the communities.

When in fact, we must show a balanced budget to the Regional Chamber of Accounts. For us, our self-financing capacity always comes out positive.

The Agglo still worked well on its self-financing capacity over the last two terms.

What will be the difficulties?

The state has less money; the department ofOrne and the Region Normandie scratching their heads to find a solution. Even if they are other majorities, that doesn't make us happy: we know very well that, when we go to knock on the door, the discussion will be different.

In the same way, when the State says that it is going to lower its fund translfrom 2.5 billion euros to 1 billion, it will impact us.

Today, we have high standards, sustainable development, so we are trying to tap into the green fund. It doesn't make us happy either. So when we add all that up, we say to ourselves: what do we do? Or what are we not doing?

There is something I hold dear: I don't want the debt to increaseand the president follows without problem, because if we increase the debt, it has an impact four or five years later. So the trace that is left is not hyperpositive.

There, we can, we can go on our projects with our equipment capacity. So here we go.

It's crazy how detailed it gets now. They say we are not increasing taxes, we are told, “still happy!” »

However, raw materials have increased. Everything has increased. We, if we want to provide service, offer a public service, we have to balance it out. It’s a hell of an exercise, I think!

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