Cs asks to update the parking tax ordinance to guarantee equality for Benidorm residents

The reason, as explained by the opposition mayor, is that the Blue Zone fee and exemption ordinance was approved in 2011 based on a street map that is “completely out of date.” To correct this situation, Ciudadanos will take a proposal to the plenary session of Benidorm, understanding that this circumstance “in addition to being an injustice may be violating the law by discriminating against some citizens against others.”

The spokesman for Cs, Juan Balastegui, has indicated that “it is a pending issue, which discriminates against first-class residents compared to second-class residents, which has not been resolved either with the approval of the new orange and green parking areas” . For this reason, “we hope that the rest of the Corporation will support us and the roller will not block an issue that is protected by law again.”

Balastegui explained that there are many residents of Benidorm, from downtown streets, who today do not have to pay for the Blue Zone from 9 to 10, from 1 to 2 p.m., from 4 to 5 p.m. or from 7 to 8 p.m. while their neighbors from the same block, registered in a different street, if they have to. This is because the ordinance was made more than a decade ago based on regulated parking zones that have nothing to do with the current ones. “We find, for example, that those registered on Ruzafa street do not have to pay for those hours, while those on l’Aigüera or Emilio Ortuño, adjoining roads, do have to. This is due to the fact that when the rates were approved in 2011, parking in many streets was free, but they became paid in 2013, the date of the first major expansion of the Blue Zone in the last decade (at that time, 345 new plazas). Since that date, no government, neither the popular nor the socialist, corrected this situation. The spokesman for Ciudadanos has stressed that the City Council, as a public Administration, must ensure that the legality established in the basic principle of equality of all Benidorm citizens is complied with.

But the local government does not have the same opinion. The Councilor for Mobility, José Ramón González de Zárate, indicated that this circumstance cannot be modified right now because the contract, which was approved in 2015 by the then PSOE and Liberal government, is valid until 2025, therefore “it would cause a claim by the concession company”. Thus, he pointed out that the streets that do not include “are minimal” and “very few neighbors” have asked this question. Thus, he argued that “next to each street in the blue zone, residents’ zones have been made as orange zones or they will be made green” so that residents can park for free.

However, he added that “the objective of the blue zone is the rotation of vehicles” and that is not fulfilled if there are cars parked four hours in a row. He added that the local government will reject this proposal after consulting with the technicians.