the essential
The meeting of the municipal council of Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne) kept the audience in suspense for two hours, this Monday, October 14, 2024. Not a word on the controversy of the moment, the paid parking at the SNCF station, of which there will undoubtedly be discussed on Thursday October 17 during the next community council. It was the management of the Ingreo nautical complex which animated the debates.
The residents of Villebourbon station who filled the chairs at the back in the municipal council room of Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne), this Monday, October 14, 2024, will have been at their expense. The current angry subject, the entry into force of a paying machine for SNCF users, was not mentioned for a single minute during this session which lasted two hours.
“We will definitely talk about it next Thursday at the Grand Montauban community council because we will ask a question about it,” confided Rodolphe Portolès as he left the council room. The communist regional councilor, and the other members of the opposition, had something to grind on another “classic” of the right/left political debate in Montauban: the Ingreo nautical complex.
Three annual activity reports on the management of the swimming pool were presented to the municipal council which had to take note of them (because these reports do not call for a vote)… three, instead of two usually, because this year 2023 was marked by the end of operation of the “historic” delegatee, Vert Marine, and the start of operation of Ingreo by Recrea.
Rodolphe Portolès fires the first salvo on the public/private partnership. “A little more than 2 million per year paid by the City to the delegatee of this PPP, Vinci then now PEH (1), or 59.4 million at the end to become the owner of the buildings which already have numerous defects… it’s is the reality of this major project that you will have carried out. Needless to say, if you had had to build it yourself it would have cost you much more!
DDM – DDM MANUEL MASSIP
The socialist Arnaud Hilion speaks of a “gruesome and sprawling set-up” and “bad choices”, regretting that “the city has lost control for 25 years”. Mayor Marie-Claude Berly disagrees with this statement: “We have not lost control in this public/private partnership, in any case we are sure we have not lost it.”
The best lawyer in the Ingreo case obviously remains Brigitte Barèges. The municipal councilor makes an effective plea. “What you call sprawling, Mr. Hilion, is simply the superposition of two contracts, the first for construction with Vinci and the second, a public service delegation signed with Vert Marine which performed very well for its first DSP “. And the municipal councilor recalled that at the end of the 2010s, Ingreo exceeded 450,000 entries. “Covid called everything into question in 2020 but Recrea is catching up with already 314,000 admissions in 2023. For the municipality, this DSP is an excellent contract because if it generates deficits, it is the private sector which supports them.”
Thierry Deville, returning to the public/private partnership model, recalls “that the socialist town halls of Ile-de-France used it heavily on swimming pool projects”. “Even Martine Aubry chose the PPP,” adds Brigitte Barèges.
There, it is a Prévert-style list and it is not the litany of criticisms that the opposition could have developed, but quite simply the announcements made by the head of Récréa during the commission in which she participated.
Enough to shut up the Montalban left? Nay! Rodolphe Portoles brings out his best card when the operating report for the second half of 2023 comes… the first presented by Recrea.
DDM – DDM MANUEL MASSIP
The elected communist was present at the commission meeting where the director of Recrea stepped in, to say the least. And Rodolphe Portolès launches into “a Prévert-style list” drawn up by the director: “Numerous hygiene and technical concerns. Judicial expertise at all levels of the basins. Numerous water leaks in all the basins. Still not of slides. A 25 meter pool which has problems with algae. Numerous problems with dirt, scale and damaged joints.
“I remind you that we are in legal expertise”, procrastinates Marie-Claude Berly. Sports assistant Daniel Bory remains on the sporting field and responds with figures: “Since June 2023, Ingreo has recorded 259,664 entries and we have received 30 complaints in total, that’s only 0.01%. cannot let it be said that the Montauban swimming pool would be obsolete.”
The former 3rd line of Sapiac even made public an email from the (now) famous director of Ingreo, dated October 10, where she informed the elected official that “for the first time, the nautical complex exceeded 2,000 subscribers”, precisely 2,087 at the end of September.
