Around a hundred tricolor scarves walked around the paved courtyard of the Haute-Garonne prefecture in Toulouse on Thursday, November 7, late in the morning. It was neither a commemoration nor a large working meeting, but the expression of a “deep anger, a feeling of injustice” that the mayors and elected officials of the department feel, according to Karine Traval-Michelet, socialist mayor of Colomiers, 40,000 inhabitants, vice-president of Toulouse Métropole and member of the office of the Association of Mayors of France (AMF).
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Mayors, municipal councilors but also elected officials from the departmental council and the Occitanie region came to protest “against the measures announced in the finance bill which provides for 11 billion euros in savings [selon le calcul réalisé par l’AMF] on the community budget ». For Christophe Lubac (Génération. s), the mayor of Ramonville, south of Toulouse, “the measures announced will have disastrous consequences in the territories, since the State is imposing its colossal public deficit on communities”.
According to the elected official, These recent decisions will represent a financial effort of 480,000 euros between now and the end of his mandate, or the equivalent of twelve to fourteen civil servant positions. In Colomiers, the impact of government measures is estimated at around 3 million euros, on a municipal budget of around 70 million euros. The cause is the drop in the overall operating allocation, the increase in levies from the special social security scheme responsible for old-age insurance for territorial civil servants and the increase in direct State deductions from municipal finances.
“For ten years, we have lost 80% of our revenue”
“We are good managers, and we just ask for consideration, for dialogue”adds Karine Traval-Michelet. Like around thirty mayors of the department, she had decided to close the doors of her town hall during this day of mobilization. In Léguevin, in western Toulouse, the mayor, Etienne Cardeilhac-Pugens, will “stop all urban projects for 2025. We are already tightening our belts, I don’t want to become just a manager”he laments. In his commune, a gendarmerie was to be built, but the project was abandoned due to lack of funds. “As a result, I am obliged to hire municipal police officers, in response to demand from the population. We won't last long like this.”believes this unlabeled elected official.
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