News | Sunday, 08 March 2009

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In the name of the father

President Eddie Fenech Adami is nearing the end of his term, but he’s making sure his son will last longer in office

The church parvis of St Helen’s Basilica in Birkirkara will be bustling with people after Sunday mass this morning as President Eddie Fenech Adami will stop for coffee with the mayor of his hometown towards the end of a four-day official visit.
Michael Fenech Adami, the Mayor of Birkirkara, has mobilised the presidential machinery under his father’s helm to his locality, three months away from the local election here and less than a month away from when the presidential term comes to an end.
For the mayor, with the ever-handy surname pumping up much (if not all) of his political capital, getting re-elected should not really be much of a headache, although the council’s financial situation will demand a good amount of glossing over to make it palatable to the discerning Karkariżi. The council’s latest financial statements registered a €295,753 imbalance.
Over the last year, Fenech Adami’s council was accused of running an “exorbitant financial imbalance” by the Director of Local Government, who had also warned him of the illegality of the situation as instead of reducing last year’s deficit, he “increased it considerably”.
The same local government director ordered Fenech Adami to stop incurring any other expenses and to stick exclusively to honouring contractual obligations until the financial situation is brought back to normal, holding back from committing the council to capital projects.
The mayor defends the over-expenditure and excesses, which include a €114,773 contract to Polidano Group for Gnien l-Istazzjon alone, and blames central government’s decreasing allocation of funds for Birkirkara.
“Unfortunately, the current deficit situation faced by the Birkirkara Local Council has stemmed from the excessive delays in payments by the various Government Departments and Authorities,” he said in reply to reports about his council’s deficit. “Besides that, the ever-increasing expenditure incurred to meet the residents’ demands is not mutually corresponding to the increases in the annual financial allocation which on average never increased, if not decreased, over these last five years.”
The latest headache for the council is about the over-expenditure related to the anti-flooding project in Tal-Wejter. The council had awarded the contract to Vassallo Builders in 2002 for the sum of Lm566,109.
According to the council’s architect, who was summoned by the council earlier this year, “delays due to bad weather and storm water on the site … caused the project to be completed in 2005” and yet again, the amount went over budget at Lm623,125.
In the auditors’ notes to the council’s financial statements ended in March 2007, it is noted that the council was dependent on further sources of funds other than the annual financial allocation by central government, on the collection of debts due to the council and on the continued support of the council’s creditors.
“Any adverse change in either of these assumptions above would not let the council able to meet its financial obligations as they fall due without curtailing its future commitments,” the auditors’ note observed.
As if that was not enough, the mayor is also interested in having a cemetery and retirement home built in Birkirkara, with a potential to drain further the council’s coffers.
The two ideas stirred controversy because of the proximity of the proposed sites to residential areas, and with the latter also threatening the existence of a 5,000 square-metre playing field in John Borg Street.
Fenech Adami had said the council changed its mind after listening to the concerns of the residents amid a campaign against the building up of one of their locality’s few remaining open spaces. Residents argued that the local plan identified the area as an open space, and that the development would be in breach of an existing agreement governing the use of the land. The playing field was devolved to the Birkirkara council in February 2006, on condition that any subsequent additions or improvements would be made “within the spirit of the use of the property.”
The new proposal is to locate the retirement home in the area known as Tal-Infetti, but with the current financial situation, in all probability Fenech Adami will reach retirement age by the time it is completed. In any case, diverse as he is from his father, Michael has pitted his council into a financial black hole reminiscent of the Fenech Adami “money-no-problem” era.

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