Faced with soaring energy prices, communities must tighten their belts, so as not to weigh down their finances. In full preparation of the municipal budget for 2023, the mayor of Angoulême and president of the Urban Community of Greater AngoulêmeXavier Bonnefont, details the levers to overcome the “unpredictable” increase in electricity and gas prices.
Have you done the math, how much will the increase in the price of electricity and gas cost you next year?
From next year, this is an increase of at least +100%, therefore a doubling of the volumes of the electricity and gas budgets. For example, for the city of Angoulême, it will be around 5.5 million euros.
How to explain such an increase? By the absence of a tariff shield for local authorities?
No tariff shield for local authorities, so we therefore go through public markets coordinated by Greater Angoulême on its behalf, but also for all the municipalities of the agglomeration. And we obviously face market volatility. Moreover, it is an energy price which, for me, cannot be explained, but insofar as we are going to have to settle next year.
For the city, we are working on a scenario with at least 20% minimum investment
Do you plan to take drastic measures for the 2023 budget?
Yes, we are facing this tsunami, we are already taking action. We have already taken braking measures for the 2022 budget year, whether in the city of Angoulême or the urban community. But above all, we are preparing important measures for the 2023 budget year to deal with this increase.
One of the first tracks is the decline in investment. Are you reviewing the construction sites at the moment?
You know that Angoulême has a complicated past in terms of debt. And this is still the case for a few years. This is the result of management problems that may have existed in the 1980s. And obviously, when we have operating budgets that increase in such a way, we are forced to lower investments so as not to indebt the city of spectacular way. For the city, for example, we are already working on a scenario at least 20% minimum investment to be able to face this wave.
The non-replacement of departures from the community or retirements is also a lever
Another track is the reduction of municipal staff?
Yes, we have put on the table all the possible avenues, all the measures related to energy sobriety, but also any other budget over which we have leverage. Obviously, the non-replacement of departures from the community or retirements is also a lever. We are also working on the 2023 budget framework and we have asked the various departments to work on an objective of reduction of at least 11% of charges of a general nature, excluding fluids and foodstuffs for our schools and nurseries.
We are also working to perhaps relocate associations that use occasional rooms differently by closing sites during the winter period to be able to gather them on only a few sites and avoid heating all of our municipal sites. All of this will be the subject of arbitration in November at the latest by the elected officials, since we still need to consolidate a lot of elements in order to be able to make informed decisions. On public lighting, we are looking at how it can be turned off over an entire part of the city, at certain times or not, in the months to come.
Many cities have switched to LED bulbs. This is not the case in Angoulême, why not have taken this turn before?
As you know, in Angoulême, we have been investing considerably in energy renovation, particularly in buildings, for several years now. Already, last year, we had an increase in the electricity and gas markets of 80% and this had materialized by only a 20% increase in our budgets for the city of Angoulême. This was the result of significant investment spending since 2018. We have drastically reduced our consumption since over the past three years, it has already dropped by 20% thanks to our investment work related to the energy renovation of our buildings.
We have already been working on this effort for several years, we have started the same thing on public lighting since we have already put in LED the whole of a district of the city of Angoulême which serves as an experiment. And by 2023, over several years, we are deploying this system on all of our lighting. Except that at this very moment, we are therefore in a period of launching public contracts to be able to choose the companies that will do the work over the next two to three years. The city of Angoulême has 12,000 light pointsof 200 cabinets on its municipal territory, so it does not happen with a wave of a magic wand.