MANACOR
THE Manacor town council will be hosting the Plastic Arts Ceremony in April. The selected pieces of works for the competition will be exhibited from 4 to 30 April in the Manacor “Torre dels Enagistes” Museum. The presentation ceremony for the winning pieces of art will be decided by a jury during the official opening ceremony. Those pieces chosen will then be exhibited from the 4 June to 3 July in the same building. This competition is sponsored by the Council of Majorca and the bank “Sa Nostra”.

Unfinished works

LLUCMAJOR
THE Sa Torre residents yesterday announced that they will soon be protesting in order to ask the town council to finish some of the public construction works in the area. They are stating that these projects have not been finished even though the works were paid for in full last year. A spokesperson from the Sa Torre residents association said that the public projects were stopped a year ago even though they have financial backing of around 6 million euros to pay for all the works to be completed. The works in question are for public street lighting in half of the area, water storage and road signals. All these have not yet been finished. Furthermore, works to create a green area in Sa Torre has still not even started.

Lack of funds

POLLENSA
THE Pollensa town council has annouced that the prestigious architect, Rafael Moneo, will not be leading the project to design an auditorium for the area. This is because of one simply fact, lack of funding from the Balearic Government, which is “insufficient” for this project, said the Mayor of Pollensa, Joan Cerdà. Instead municipal service experts will be designing a multi-purpose building that will be “more along the style of the Lloseta theatre rather than the auditorium in Alcúdia,” said the Mayor. This building will not be as grand as first hoped but “will be used as a theatre, a cinema, a gallery, and as a concert hall” said Joan Cerdà. The Balearic Government granted 3 million euros for the project but the initial budget for the building if it was to be designed by the architect Rafael Moneo was around 10 million euros. The Pollensa town council have been in negotiations with the architect for the last couple of months with the hope of reducing this cost. The Mayor wanted to give his thanks to the architect Rafael Moneo for accepting to build an auditorium in the area in the first place. “He has done all he can and he even lowered his budget to 8.5 million euros but still this is too much for us”, added the Mayor. It was agreed in a government pact that Pollensa would have a similar auditorium as the one constructed in Alcúdia. The Balearic Government granted 5 million euros to the Alcúdia town council to construct the auditorium, which was built 5 years ago. This is 2 million euros more than what the Government is now allowing for the auditorium in Pollensa. “The town council can not pay for the difference, we might be able to manage a 2 million euros difference but never 5 and a half million euros”, he added.

School expansion

SINEU
THE Sineu town council and the Balearic Government have signed an agreement to go-ahead with buying land from a private owner. A part of the 1'108 square metre plot of land will be used to extend and improve the Sa Quintana public school. The Ministry of Finance will buy the house and land in full and once this has been finalised, they will then start to split the land into different plots. 442 square metres will be sold to the Sineu town council for a sum of 100'000 euros, so that the school can be extended. The remaining land will be further split into two plots of land and put on the market. “The two plots of land will be easy to sell”, said the deputy mayor. The new land will be used to construct a courtyard and the old school building will have more classrooms. Currently there are a lack of classrooms at the school. If everything goes ahead as planned, this new part to the school could be ready for the 2006-7 school year.