Town Hall Spends

When there is talk about the difficulties facing the two main industries in Mallorca - tourism and construction - it is perhaps easy to overlook a sector of the economy that has enjoyed significant growth since the turn of the century. Whether it should have enjoyed such growth is open to debate, for that sector is public administration, and nowhere has this growth been more evident than at the island's town halls.

Since 1999, the spend on town hall personnel has doubled, and in "The Diario" yesterday the percentage increases in terms of this spend were set out - municipality by municipality. In the northern area, some of these increases appear staggering - 252% in Búger for example - but one has to bear in mind from what base these figures are calculated. Nevertheless, 152% in Muro, 175% in Sa Pobla, 154% in Pollensa all sound like a lot. Only Alcúdia has not broken the 100 barrier, by a mere 0.4 of a per cent. Sound like a lot but not by comparison with some of the smaller towns - Santa Eugènia has experienced a rise of 2,700 per cent. There again, it used to spend the equivalent of a mere 14,300 euros in 1999.

The explanation for the increases lies, partly, with an improvement - a necessary improvement - in the provision of local services such as sanitation and education. One cannot dismiss all the rises as extravagance. Generally, the largest rises have occurred at the town halls of the smaller municipalities. The figures for Pollensa and Alcúdia might strike one as being excessive, but they are lower than elsewhere.

Nevertheless, there are reasons to be concerned by these figures. Firstly, the financing of greater town hall spends was a feature of what is referred to as the "years of economic bonanza", the period of a dash for growth echoed across Spain in both the private and public sectors, but one that relied to no small extent on European benevolence and easy credit. Rather as the entire Spanish and Mallorcan economies have been exposed as shaky in their sustainability, because of loose credit and a lack of diversification, so the public sector town halls now face unsustainability in terms of further growth in personnel numbers and spend.

Secondly, there are issues as to priorities and to what can seem like duplication of departmental responsibilities that mirror levels of government higher up the public administration food chain - the Council of Mallorca and regional government. Not all town halls in Mallorca are faced with a dual economy, one that deals both with needs of residents and of tourists, but many are. While services like police, rubbish collection, street cleaning are essential for both sets of needs, there is also the frontline provision of assistance to tourists - i.e. the tourist offices. In Alcúdia, for instance, it has long been the case that the department is under-resourced, resulting in offices not being manned as long as they should be. In Playa de Muro and Can Picafort, the offices make do with minimal staffing, while Playa de Muro could do with a satellite office in Alcúdia Pins and Can Picafort with two, neither of them the current one that is located in no-tourist land between Son Bauló and the main centre of Can Picafort. Where the police are concerned, the lack of coverage in Son Serra de Marina has been well-publicised, while Alcúdia would benefit from greater numbers to tackle some of the stuff that happens on the streets and for which by-laws exist yet are often flouted.

Local myth would have it that the town halls are in fact over-staffed, reflecting a culture of excessive bureaucracy and jobsworthing. To an extent, this may be true - hence my initial point as to how debatably sensible some of the personnel growth has been. Yet it is the apparent duplication that raises most questions. A case in point is that of Alcúdia and its canals, bridges and lakes, all environmental features but the responsibility not of the town hall's environment department but the central Costas authority.

The wider issue is, or should be, public administration in its totality. In other words, the interaction between the different levels of government and the allocation of responsibilities. It is this total bureaucracy that can be excessive, bloated and time-consuming, such as in the case of the convoluted process of granting hotel building licences that involves local and central departments and which leads to so much work being undertaken without a licence or with one pending; and this despite the loosening of regulations recently.

The town hall spends may or may not be too high, but with the federation of local authorities admitting that current levels cannot be sustained, it is time for a fundamental appraisal of the island's public provision - at all levels.