Garda Uno Reports Growth and New Services at Brescia Municipal Meeting
The General Assembly of members representing the 19 municipalities, in addition to the Provincial Administration of Brescia, was held at the conference room of the Azienda Speciale Consorzio Garda Uno in Portese. The session was attended by almost all the municipalities, mainly through their respective mayors. Among them were 7 newly elected mayors who recently took office after the election results of June 13th.
After the greeting from the assembly president, Ing. Manlio Mantovani, the president of Consorzio Garda Uno, Guido Maruelli, before moving to approve the 1998 financial statements, outlined the current profile of the entire operational structure and the activities carried out across various services, including water treatment for the Brescia side of Lake Garda, solid waste collection and recycling in fifteen member municipalities, surface water cleaning services of Lake Garda and Lake d’Idro using the sweep boats managed by the Brescia Province, water supply systems, the territorial informational system, and recently, beach cleaning and GPL Gas supply. The population residing in the member municipalities is 89,994; the administrative staff is distributed as follows: 13 employees at the headquarters, 20 at the Peschiera wastewater treatment plant and collector systems, and 60 personnel involved in RSU collection services.
Company activities and services
The collectors currently extend for 93.60 km, with 26,268,800 cubic meters of material processed. The fleet consists of just under 70 vehicles. Guido Maruelli emphasized that the Company “is growing, and the numbers demonstrate it. The 1998 financial balance closes with a final account of over eighteen billion lire; I would call it an undoubtedly significant figure.”
We are also completing the full cycle of RSU collection, now involving 15 out of the 19 associated municipalities. Consequently, I believe that by the end of the year, when Sirmione, Lonato, Tremosine, and Roè Volciano join, we will have completed the service collection cycle. Afterwards, we will need to focus – continues President Maruelli – on disposal to ensure a comprehensive and well-structured service.
Regarding new services, we must say that the company consistently demonstrates an internal capacity for planning and management that personally surprises me, and I must commend the general director, Arch. Richetti, and his team who did not shy away when the municipality of Tremosine, seemingly as a provocation, asked whether we could consider designing gas distribution through the GPL system.
Of course, once this network is completed, the same service can be designed and implemented for other locations in hard-to-reach areas not served by national distribution networks, such as Limone and Tignale. This is an important service aligned with the company’s legal scope; we did not expect, says President Maruelli, to be addressing this issue so soon.
The financial year closed positively but then ended with a deficit of about 82 million due to taxes. “The companies, rightly, benefited from central government policies with tax moratoria. We had the opportunity not to pay IRPEG and IRAP for three years.”
We now face, despite a positive economic result, supported by the Board of Auditors, a new reality where, with a profit of 230 million, we must pay over 300 million in taxes. Naturally, the largest part of expenditures is personnel costs, amounting to 4,390,000,000 lire, followed by electricity costs (2,304,000,000 lire), and sludge disposal (1,136,000,000 lire). Capital assets amount to 67.5 billion lire.