“It’s a relatively spectacular recovery”

Gard objective: A report from the regional chamber of accounts published on October 18, and published from the analysis of the financial years from 2018 to 2023, reported a “deteriorated financial situation“. What happens now?

Christophe Fontfreyde : The accounts are recovering. We have not completely finalized the result for the 2024 financial year, but we have a range which is a positive result between 300,000 and 600,000 euros. This is a relatively spectacular recovery, although we actually had a deficit of 448,000 euros last year. When I arrived, the accounts were negative but only slightly negative, because there were a bunch of various and varied invoices which were unpaid, and which were putting our suppliers in difficulty. So we paid everything we should have paid in previous years. Some things were up to 5 years old. This created a deficit, but which is the sum of everything we had not paid in previous years.

Is this a satisfactory result?

This means that the finances are now healthy. But it is not yet satisfactory because we are still a little short on cash flow since when we restore budgetary balance, it takes a little time before this is felt in cash flow. We must therefore not believe that we can spend 300,000 or 600,000 euros like that tomorrow. This is unfortunately not the case. Most of this positive result plugs the hole in the past. We will therefore arrive at a cumulative result of between zero and 200,000 euros. We have to have another very good year like this before we can breathe. In any case, we will still have to remain vigilant about spending in 2025. But we are returning to normal operations. This means that the park tool is once again functional at the territorial level. The tool was so dysfunctional that it no longer had any use for the territory, the park is not important, what is important is the territory and how it can be useful to it. So he is able to do his job again. Now it is the Camargue people who will take advantage of it to say how they want to use it.

What did you do to obtain this result?

There were exceptional contributions from all members who paid a total of around 180,000 euros, which corresponds to around 12% of their annual contribution in addition. Everyone made the effort commensurate with what they usually paid. We took it as a return of confidence in the park team. The rest is better management, that is to say a rationalization of expenses, a streamlining of the organization chart, work to obtain subsidies and revenue. We reduced expenses, increased revenues and put the organization chart in order. Which gives us a little leeway to prepare for what comes next. The team is a little tight, probably too tight compared to all the missions we have because we have not renewed all the departures, the middle managers have not been replaced. But as long as we are in the charter revision phase, as long as we do not have a forecast for the next 15 years, we are not going to create definitive mission manager positions. We will recruit to revise the charter, to fight against the salinization of the delta, but we will recruit permanently only when this has been stabilized with the charter put back on the agenda.

What are the main projects for 2025, besides the revision of the charter?

All the margin that we are going to mobilize will be committed to the fight against the salinization of the delta and to the revision of the charter. We have a roadmap of 30 operational actions which will take place over 2025/2026, while we write the charter because we did not want to do nothing in the meantime. So these are very operational things to get fresh water flowing again in the Camargue, in close collaboration with the joint management union of the Pays d’Arles trade union associations, Symadrem and in coordination with the mixed union of the Gard Camargue. To do this, we set up a “water and landscape” division which manages all 30 operations. We reorganized internally to have a working group of five people. We have three at the moment who have already started working. We have already carried out the first emergency commission which took place at the beginning of the month. For the other two people, we are looking in particular for a hydrology works engineer.

Is exceptional aid, or a thaw in the financial participation of members of the union committee, planned for 2025?

No, financial participation has been frozen for a very long time for all parks in the South Region. A thaw takes place for charter changes. We’re probably not going to spend energy there for the next few years. We will do with what we have, we will manage as best as possible and prepare, as part of the revision of the charter, a park budget that is more adapted for the next charter. As for the exceptional aid, we consider that it was really to help us clean up the past, so there is no new one planned.