*Updated Mar. 3*
Mérida, Yucatán -
The White City, capital of this peninsular state due south of America's Gulf Coast, is feeling the same financial pressures affecting many communities north and south of the border. It's worried how it's going to keep the lights on.
Mayor Renán Barrera Concha reports that the city is about 400 million pesos in debt. At today's exchange rate of 12.75 pesos, that represents almost $31.5 million U.S. dollars.
The bills include both immediate payables - sometimes called trade debt - and long term obligations inherited from the previous PRI administration, according to the mayor.
Barrera, who took office late last year, belongs to the National Action Party (PAN). Mérida's former mayor was Angelica Araujo Lara, a member of Mexico's powerful Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which captured the presidency in 2012.
Both Araujo and former PRI Yucatán governor Ivonne Ortega Pacheco, whose term ended in 2012, have been roundly criticized for severe financial mismanagement. Ortega overspent the state budget by about 30% every year she was in office, according to Mérida's Diario de Yucatán. Yucatán state and municipal debt continue to rise, with predictable consequences for many. The paper accused her of "unprecedented spending" shortly before her term ended.
In August Mérida was so financially strapped that it couldn't pay its trash collection bills. City fathers owed three private contractors and a landfill almost $3 million dollars, and some neighborhoods went days without service. Mérida faces "environmental catastrophe," as trash piles up and residents hit the ceiling. Part of the bill was eventually liquidated, but contractors said last fall that they were still owed large sums by the municipal government.
Former mayor Angelica Araujo (l.) and former governor Ivonne Ortega Pacheco (r.), October 2011
In December president Enrique Peña Nieto named Ortega to a highly coveted political post on PRI's National Policy and Planning Committee. Araujo was elected to Mexico's Senate last year, where she now represents the state of Yucatán. But Araujo remains under a cloud in the city she once ran.
Meanwhile, Mérida's new PAN mayor is trying to pay off the almost 100 million pesos - $7.9 million dollars - the city has owed ordinary purveyors since Arajuo's term. Like all governmental units, Mérida must purchase goods and services for myriad purposes, and many local suppliers have not been paid for months. With the city struggling to juggle even routine trade debt, Barrera said he's worried the "quality of municipal services" could suffer. Long term public works projects will have to be put on hold, he added, unless something is done.
Barrera is trying to secure a 200 million peso ($15.75 million dollar) bank loan to deal with Mérida's most pressing bills. If the application is tentatively approved, the measure will be presented to the city council for a vote within the week. The debt would be amortized over 15 years, he said.
The state of Yucatán, whose financial affairs are separate from those of its capital, is estimated to owe at least $750 million dollars in long term debt. Almost all of it was incurred during the Ortega administration (Yucatán's Public Debt: Mortgaging Future Generations?).
Mar. 3 - There's been nary a word about La Plancha, Mérida's largely abandoned railway terminal, since the Shakira concert was staged there almost two years ago (see Comments below). But now a local historical association proposes the creation of a new convention facility on the grounds. MGR has just two questions: where will the millions of dollars come from in a city which can scarcely pay the trash man, and once built, who would come? The city already has a large and modern convention center called Siglo XXI not more than a 15 minute drive away from La Plancha, so it's hard to make a case that it needs yet another one. This daffy idea will go out the back door along with the rest of the day's rubbish, waiting for pick up - if the sanitation workers decide to come by, that is.
Jan. 3 - Mexican governors continue to raise their salaries, while half the nation remains in poverty
Oct. 3 - A spendthrift Yucatán looks for cash anywhere, anyway
© MGRR 2013. All rights reserved. This article may be cited or briefly quoted with proper attribution or a hyperlink, but not reproduced without permission.
Mérida paid Colombian singer Shakira 21 million pesos ($1.75 million USD at the time) to give a 100 minute free public concert in July 2011 - more than enough to decorate a baby's room. Shakira Wows 170,000 Fans in La Plancha. What's never been fully clarified is whether the honorable ayuntamiento recovered the money from private contributors, as it contends, or whether taxpayers ended up eating the bill. Shakira – a $21 million peso ticket, but so little to show for it.
But hey, people got to see Shakira... fair exchange for a 400 million peso debt... Thanks Angelica!
ReplyDeleteAnd for those who have not passed by La Plancha recently, I can report that it is not looking a whole lot different than it did before the expensive clean-up operation that took place before the concert. Yucatan jungle grows fast, and soon reclaims what was taken from it if constant maintenance is not applied. And nothing much has been applied to La Plancha since Shakira left the building...
ReplyDeleteAgain, for reader clarification, when the PRI administration of former mayor Angelica Arajuo promoted the Shakira concert in early 2011, it selected Mérida's decaying railroad station and surrounding grounds as the venue. The city argued that cleaning up the grounds to prepare for the July 2011 performance would benefit Mérida in the long term as well as the short, since the multi-acre site, known as La Plancha, could be put to all sorts of good uses in the years ahead - including revenue generating ones.
ReplyDeleteAlmost two years after the expensive clean up project, the property sits just as idle today as it did then. La Plancha remains an eye sore (although less so now than before), and it's not particularly well situated for anything. Freight cars are still parked there, abandoned locomotives and railroad rolling stock are just meters away, and the surrounding neighborhood is rich in lack of charm and devoid of natural beauty. There's no reason to believe La Plancha has a future any different than its past: that of a long abandoned rail terminal from another era in peninsular history.