This Thursday evening, the college presented the very first budget of this term. A budget that is intended to be provisional.
An ordinary budget that worries
Sébastien Vanbelle (Génér’actions), alderman in charge of finances, first wanted to explain that he was presenting a provisional budget, in transition. “As with the CPAS budget, we only had 10 days to put it in place; a major budgetary change will take place during the second quarter.“
Last year, the budget was, for the first time in several years, in balance. This time, it will be the case again but the finance alderman started with a warning. “The most important and most worrying information is that, in order to guarantee a balanced budget, €1,047,644.04 of provision had to be used. That is to say that we have, more or less, a structural deficit which runs into a million euros between expenditure and revenue. There therefore remains a balance of ordinary provisions of €102,355. This means that if structural policies to achieve a balanced budget are not implemented, next year we will have a very significant deficit.“
Regarding revenues, they are not as high as desired. Transfer revenues, which represent 85% of general revenues, are only slightly increasing (real estate withholding tax increasing by €103,450.29 while PIT decreases by €55,000). Note that the municipality will not have, as in 2024, the exceptional dividend from IDETA of more than €90,000. An evaluation of registration taxes is planned in the next budgetary modification. The sum of the increases for revenue therefore reaches almost €66,000.
As for ordinary expenses, the municipality is however experiencing a significant increase in staff expenses (+ 7.9%). “This is for two reasons. First, as in all other municipalities, we have an increase in accountability contributions and obviously indexation.“The sum of the increase in general expenditure is thus more than €610,000, a significant amount compared to the sum of revenue.
By way of conclusion, Sébastien Vanbelle said that the work will have to be done in two stages, first cleaning up spending and then continuing the investments that were put forward during the electoral campaign.
Ecolo questions expenses
Pascal Hillewaert, opposition Ecolo councilor, then spoke about spending. “Obviously, the situation is very worrying, as we have been saying for years. That’s why we took the trouble to create provisions, it’s indeed worrying that we have to use them this year. Almost all the forecasts that had been made were used this year. In my opinion, on a quick reading of the budget, there were feasible savings in the budget this year. We’re going to talk about lighting, I also didn’t understand why the directors’ attendance fees were increased by 35%. I personally believe that there are expenses that could have been avoided.“The party thus abstained on the budget, just like the PS.
Marc Vanderstichelen, new mayor, justified the increase in lighting expenses by the fact that the lights would henceforth stay on all night, “it is a request from citizens.“As for the directors’ fees, these are future commissions.”We will involve the opposition to allow you to participate even more closely in the decisions we will take at the college and in the municipal council. We therefore decided to create technical commissions, such as a commission on the budget so that you do not receive the budget 10 days before, but that you participate in its development (…) so that the representatives of the opposition and the majority work together on projects. There is therefore a cost attached to that because we will give attendance fees to the members of the municipal council. Our desire is to have maximum participation in the decisions we want to make, so that they are not decisions imposed by the college.“
A balanced CPAS budget for 2025
During this council, a second budget modification was voted on with a presumed bonus compared to the first modification of €546,162. Concerning the 2025 budget, the municipal intervention remains unchanged and amounts to €3,888,462.60. A balanced budget was thus presented. The MB2 bonus is integrated. What is also increasing is the allocation for the accountability contribution with more than €1,194,000 (compared to €900,000 in 2024). The extraordinary budget provides for investments of €804,700. The 2025 CPAS budget was voted unanimously.
E.H.
