A SOAP OPERA

This is a soap opera that lasts for several years: in the small town of Aigues-Vives, Gard, citizens-taxpayers are struggling with the municipality, in a land speculation business.

To summarize, the municipality had argued its preemptive right to acquire a plot of non-constructible land at 5000 euros, before handing it on sale at a price 16 times higher. Such a price differential would involve site development works to make buildings, but it has not happened. Thus, for a parcel of no real value, Mayor Jacky Rey wanted to make a profitable transaction for the town.

In this situation, the press won’t to speak of "good deal" from the community. But after preemption field resales are indeed a form of taxation, especially when there is added value as is potentially the case here. If there is good deal, it is certainly not for taxpayers ...
Taxpayers also are mobilizing all-out in this town of 3140 souls experiencing serious financial difficulties. The debt of the city is more than 1,000 euros per capita, well above the average of the municipalities of this size:

But the problem goes much further than simply land speculation story. It is that the mayor has tried repeatedly and for many years to silence the taxpayers who wanted to bring this case, and others, to the knowledge of the population.

Fortunately, Jacky Rey was systematically rejected, and local taxpayers have been informed but also to organize to take legal action.

Behind the desire to muzzle the opposition taxpayers, there is that prevent them from acting. A taxpayer who would be sentenced to a heavy fine for criticizing the mayor's management would be left unable to face new legal costs to pursue the municipality.

The latter, in turn, can fulfill his legal fees with taxpayer money, a situation that Josette Mimouni when she was struggling with Luc Jousse, mayor of Roquebrune-sur-Argens (Var ), was described as "double punishment of taxpayers' they must indeed pay their own legal costs but also those elected using to finance the budget of the community.

One could even speak of "triple punishment" because often when a conflict breaks out in a local authority, it is because a management case in which taxpayers' money is involved.

A proposal in this regard would be financially accountable and elected officials convicted in court in the exercise of their duties, in order to avoid situations like this servant of St Denis (Reunion) that Council has provided to repay what she owed to the municipality. Closer to home, we can also think of the paltry sentence of Agnès Saal  ...