News: COMMUNICATION URBAN ENTITY PRESIDENT
6th of September 2024
As President of the Urban Entity, I am sending you this letter with the intention of clarifying the recent events related to the publication posted by the Council of Alhama de Murcia on its website on the 4th of September, regarding the problem that arose in August due to the poor state of the ornamental lake located in La Isla on Condado.
In this publication, the Council indicated that I, as President of the Urban Entity, had shown a lack of collaboration and refused to attend a meeting called to deal with the urgent situation regarding the lake.
Without wishing to cause a new controversy and with deep respect for the Council of Alhama de Murcia, its technicians, councillors and the Mayoress, in view of such statements, which do not exactly correspond to the truth, it is necessary to give you my detailed version of the events which actually took place:
On the 28th of August, an official notification with only two working days' notice was received from the Council of Alhama de Murcia summoning the representatives of the Urban Entity to a meeting. This is the first time that the Council has sent an official notice for a meeting, without first contacting the administrators of the Entity, to ensure that the required people are available on the proposed date. Unfortunately, as the meeting was called at such short notice, the people associated with the Urban Entity who were due to attend the meeting, including myself as President, had other commitments scheduled or were away from the Resort.
In view of this unforeseen situation and the importance of the matter to be dealt with, on 30 August, a written reply was sent to the Council in the form of an official request, stating the reasons for the impossibility of attending such an unexpected meeting, and requesting that the Council reschedule the meeting. For this purpose, the Council was given the power to choose two nearby and alternative dates, which would guarantee the availability of those attending and the minimum time necessary to prepare the agenda as quickly as possible, as it was a matter of vital importance for the residents of Condado and particularly for the owners of La Isla.
Subsequently, on 3 September, another notification was received from the Council indicating a new meeting for 6 September. This call was also made unilaterally by the Council, without prior telephone conversation or prior notice by e-mail, in order to match the availability of those attending on behalf of the Entity. Faced with the impossibility of attending this second call, the Urban Entity responded in writing to the Council, offering several alternative dates (10th, 11th and 12th September), to be chosen by the Council itself, so that all those interested in the problem of the lake, both from the Council and the Urban Entity, could match their agendas and attend the meeting with the necessary information to deal with the matter properly, such as, for example, the reports of the Environmental technicians who inspected the lake installations on 3rd September and which have still not been received.
Therefore, it has never been my intention to disregard my duties as President of the Urban Entity and, to date, I have always acted with the diligence required by this position, especially when I have had to attend to matters of special importance, as is the case now, and above all when a representative of the Council of Alhama de Murcia has intervened, with whom we have always maintained a relationship of total respect and maximum cordiality.
Thus, the impossibility of holding a meeting with the Council has been the consequence of events beyond my responsibility, and which in no way detract from the work I have been carrying out for years as President of the Urban Entity of Condado de Alhama.
Having clarified the above, I think it is also important to point out that the occurrences that triggered the events described above originated in the filing of a complaint about the poor state of the lake of La Isla, at the initiative of several owners of Condado acting unilaterally and without the prior knowledge of the representatives of the Urban Entity.
While it is true that the obligation to maintain the ornamental lake corresponds to the Urban Entity, it is no less true that everything possible has been done materially and financially to try to fulfil it properly.
However, the complicated financial situation that the Entity has been going through does not allow it to undertake major actions and this lack of enough capacity to attend to its conservation obligations is closely related to the continued inaction of the Council of Alhama de Murcia itself which, for years, has ignored the repeated requests made formally by the Urban Entity, requesting compliance with the legal obligation that relies on the Council to claim the payment of the unpaid fees by some of the Entity's major debtors through the administrative means of enforcement.
This atypical functioning of the Alhama de Murcia Council has meant that currently, due to the non-payment of only two of its members with recognised financial solvency, the Entity has an amount of more than one million euros pending collection, due to unfairly unpaid fees that have never been claimed administratively.
In addition to all of the above, the current state of the lake is due to an extraordinary situation of force majeure, which requires actions that go beyond reasonable maintenance work, caused by the objective impossibility of accessing the water resources necessary for its continued conservation. This matter was also made clear by the Urban Entity at different times prior to the present.
In any case, I wish to state once more that, as President of the Urban Entity, I am very seriously interested in doing all that is materially and humanly possible to try to find a prompt and satisfactory solution to the problem of the lake of La Isla, and to continue working closely and cordially with the Council of Alhama de Murcia, from which, for the aforementioned reasons, we obviously need support and collaboration.
Kind regards,
Neil Simpson
