Palma will spend 1.2 million more on senior officials

The new council administration in Palma will spend approximately 1.2 million euros more on salaries for senior officials during its four-year spell than the previous Partido Popular administration of Mateo Isern.
If all the posts that have been highlighted in the council’s new organisation structure are filled, then the cost of salaries will rise to 1,076,062 euros per annum, which will be 300,000 euros more.
And this cost does not include the two additional advisers to parties represented at the council, the consequence of there now being two more parties.
Margalida Duran, the spokesperson for the PP, has urged the coalition administration to allocate this additional cost to social services instead.
The 1.2 million euros could feed 700 children for a year or pay for families’ electricity, water and gas bills.
She has criticised the fact that there will be twice as many co-ordinators as was the case with the PP - ten rather than five - and that the number of director-generals is going up to fifteen from thirteen. “We have gone from investing in people to investing in senior officials,” she observed, noting that the number could yet increase.
 The PP, therefore, have voted against the proposed increases, while Cuidadanos have abstained; their spokesperson, Josep Lluís Bauzá, does  though say that the party is against the increase in the number of officials.
Neus Truyol, for the administration, has justified the increase in order to implement and energise projects that were stopped during the PP’s time.
“Investment in senior officials is for transforming the city.”
Half the cost will be offset by savings, such as there no longer being subsistence payments made to members of the boards of directors of the city’s public companies.