Câmara Meeting – 12 Feb

As  promised, here are the bullet points of the Mayor´s speech in the Feb 12th meeting. This not the technical part of the plan given by the Architect-Engineer which in part was simultaneously translated to EN. (English) Hopefully when we have been afforded the copy of the presentation as promised, it will be translated into English and posted here.

  •  There were always 3 premises defined by the Câmara Municipal de Aljezur (CMA) in the elaboration of the  “Plano de Pormenor do Vale da Telha” (PP Vale da Telha)  : 1. No loss of rights by owners of either property or land; 2. No demolitions; 3 Environmental sustainability
  • The Plan is being made in coordination with the Secretariat of State of  Territory Planning and Nature Conservation, and CCDR- Algarve;
  • The financial component of the plan is a complex one and involves the investment of around 35 million euros over a period of 10 years (the CMA itself functions on a 11,5 million eur annual budget). So, it is vital yet to understand which part can come from the CMA, which part can come from the Central Administration and which part can come from private sector. That will determine the execution of the PP Vale da Telha.
  • In parallel, to the PP Vale da Telha, there is and Environmental Impact Assessment Evaluation process yet to be approved;
  • CCDR- Algarve will coordinate the conciliation phase between all entities and institutions that will have to issue a formal opinion on the Plan. Only after that, a proposal will be put forward to a public consultation stage, in which all citizens will be asked to provide inputs and opinions;
  • As it is known all building and housing permits in Vale da Telha are suspended since March 2012. Since that period lots of property and land owners have filed legal action in court against the CMA, and the courts always ruled in favor of maintaining the suspensions in place.
  • But in Sep 2018, the Loulé Court determined the annulment of these suspensions, forcing the CMA to evaluate each suspended licensing process one by one;
  • There is also one case where the Public Ministry asked the court to determine the demolition of one allotment  in Vale da Telha, which is causing extreme concern to the CMA for they believe this is a violation of their initial premise;
  • The CMA will ask for a meeting with the Portuguese attorney general, in order to ask to be given room to elaborate the PP Vale da Telha, due to constant legal actions being filed by the Public Ministry and the courts.
  • It took 7 years for the Plan to get to this stage of an initial proposal. This initial proposal involves more building in the already existing plots, respecting the existing indexes, and furthermore the possibility or some more building, in order to finance the execution of the PP Vale da Telha.
  • This initial proposal has yet to undergo several stages before it reaches a final proposal, and it is not expected to last less then two year  (in normal circumstances), for it to be concluded. When this happens there will be a public presentation, and all questions and comments should be made in the public consultation stage of the process;
  • In the future there will be a clarification session in EN considering the amount of foreign residents, for the language can not that be yet another issue to divide the Aljezur community;
  • An email account was set up just for Vale da Telha related issues. info.valedatelha@cm-aljezur.pt;

Interpreted by a Portuguese independent person (with no ties to the Câmara), as a voluntary action.  The contents of this translation have been approved by the Mayor himself, and in no way reflects any personal opinions. This is just a neutral translation of what was said. 

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