Vox says Sagunto is billing Pla de Barris fees without the approved payment system
Homeowner communities in the Baladre district could end up covering unpaid neighbours' bills if Sagunto does not activate, before the end of August, the payment system approved by the plenary, the Vox party warns.
Vox has questioned how Sagunto City Council is handling billing for the Pla de Barris renovation works in the Baladre district. According to the party, the Council is already sending full-amount payment letters to homeowner communities without activating the system the plenary itself approved, on a Vox amendment, so that the Council would claim unpaid amounts directly from defaulting neighbours instead of forcing the rest of the community to advance the money.
Vox spokesman José Tomás Serrano Fenollosa argues the governing team is acting as if that vote never happened, and is calling for the pending agreement to be signed as soon as possible, along with suspending the effects of bills already issued. Municipal sources counter that the mechanism will only kick in if unpaid cases appear once the voluntary payment period closes at the end of August.
Behind the dispute is the ARRU Baladre I project, which, according to Sagunto City Council, mobilises more than €10 million in EU Next Generation funds to improve accessibility and neighbourhood wellbeing in Baladre. While the disagreement is unresolved, Baladre homeowners remain unsure whether they will have to temporarily cover defaulting neighbours' payments.
The controversy runs alongside another move on the same programme: the 28 July plenary session gave the green light, Levante-EMV reported, to amend the Pla de Barris agreements specifically to protect residents who are up to date with payments — a regulatory change Vox considers insufficient unless it comes together with activating the direct-collection mechanism for defaulters. Baladre is not an isolated case: it fits into a wider line of urban renewal the City Council is pushing in several parts of the municipality with EU funding, alongside the broader economic shift under way in Sagunto as industrial projects such as the battery gigafactory arrive. For the residents affected, the political dispute is not an abstract debate: its outcome will determine whether they must advance money owed by others, even temporarily.
The Pla de Barris programme is not limited to Baladre: similar works are under way in other neighbourhoods of Sagunto and Puerto de Sagunto, so how this specific dispute is resolved could set a precedent for how future resident billing is handled across the rest of the plan's actions.
According to El Periódico de Aquí, with additional data from aytosagunto.es.