The only elected official to speak at the end of the presentation of the 2025 budget made by the president of the Haute-Savoie departmental council Martial Saddier, Virginie Duby-Muller revealed numerous figures in order to demonstrate the weaknesses of the upcoming budget . “Gross savings have fallen by 55% since the last year of the previous mandate, debt per capita has increased from 146 euros in 2023 to 252 this year and the wage bill has jumped by 29 million euros since 2020,” he said. for example reported the MP. In short, of the “healthy” situation that Martial Saddier found upon his arrival, there would be, according to her, not much left.
Moreover, all this data, combined with “massive borrowing to finance the multi-year investment plan (PPI)”, pushed her to wonder if the current strategy was “very reasonable?” » “In short, you have strained our self-financing capacity and you are leveraging the debt because you have no other lever,” she snapped.
“You underestimate the finance bill”
The parliamentarian also added that in her eyes, Martial Saddier and the executive “underestimated” the finance bill. “There will still be discussions, negotiations,” assured the departmental advisor. A way of saying that the 32 million euros taken will perhaps be 35, or 40 in reality. And that in this context, “betting on a recovery of the real estate market and an increase in transfer taxes [NDLR : une des recettes de la collectivité] » was “a dangerous hypothesis”.
Ironically, Virginie Duby-Muller ended her speech by letting out one last joke to the president: “Luckily we avoided the velodrome! If we had also had to spend 150 million euros for this equipment, the situation would be even more complicated.”
In response, Martial Saddier was rather phlegmatic: “For me, the healthy situation that we inherited was above all healthy for what we had not done and I assume recourse to borrowing, like all communities , to invest. Besides, if I remember correctly, in 2021, when you were a candidate for president of this assembly, you also wanted to change gear! And even go even harder.”
