Garda Community Elects New Leadership Focused on Environmental Preservation

Towards the renewal of the organs of the Garda Community. The members of the Garda entity’s assembly are scheduled to meet on Saturday (at Sala Brunelli in the town hall at 9:30 a.m.) to elect the president, the seven members of the executive committee, and the five members of the auditing board. The remaining three representatives who will complete the executive committee will be appointed by the Provinces (Brescia, Verona, and Trento).

Selection of the president and composition of the assembly

From recent meetings and with the agreement signed between the Provincia di Verona and Brescia, the candidate for the presidency appears to be Giuseppe Mongello, deputy mayor of Salò, who is expected to succeed the outgoing Adelio Zanelli.

However, Mongello must obtain an absolute majority, meaning at least 30 votes, since the assembly has 59 members. Although the outcome seems certain, there is always consideration of the discontent that unfortunately arises with each electoral cycle.

The Verona side of Garda aims for four representatives plus the one designated at Palazzo Scaligero, making up half of the entity’s executive committee. This recalls the composition gathered in Riva in ’96, with the election of Enrico Mrenda (who later resigned) and replaced by Cipriano Castellani, mayor of San Zeno, along with Armando Ferrari, Giancarlo Sabaini—mayors of Bardolino and Cavaion respectively—and Antonio Pasotti, then an assessor of the Municipality of Garda.

Designation of representatives and the environmental role

The designated representative for the Verona component, already decided, is Davide Bendinelli, who, as Tourism assessor, will represent the Verona administration. According to the statute, the Steering Committee must be representative of all territorial entities: Brescia, Verona, Mantua, and Trento.

So far, the Garda Community has “lacked the presence of someone genuinely sensitive to the safeguarding of the Garda territory and landscape,” say environmental groups (Wwf, Legambiente, Puegnago Committee, La Rocca Center, Friends of Gardone). To address this deficiency, they propose “that the president of the Community be chosen from among them.”

These environmental groups emphasize that it is “a public organization, funded by public money and responsible for the interests of the community. Therefore,” they argue, “it is advisable for the organization to select its president with an environmentalist perspective.”

At least according to a statement, “people think of the Garda Community as a simple entity for tourism and cultural promotion, because over the years it has never made decisions concerning the actual maintenance of Garda’s environmental integrity, which is now deteriorating.”

Assembly program and future prospects

Returning to Saturday’s assembly, it will open with a report from the outgoing president Adelio Zanelli, followed by approval of the entity’s financial statement for 1999, the amendment to the 2000 budget related to the “Garda Security Project,” and then the 2001 budget estimate. After the first part of the assembly, voting procedures will follow, with the possibility—if everything proceeds quickly—to know the names of the new Garda community leaders for the next four-year term as early as in the morning.