Local communities must juggle between 6 % inflation and the desire to preserve essential service prices for the most modest, such as school canteens.
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While inflation has accelerated again in July, against the backdrop of war repercussions in Ukraine (+ 6 % over a year), in France, parliamentarians have made communities not forgotten . To allow them to cope with the rise in prices, but also the revaluation of active solidarity income (RSA, paid by the departments) and that of the index point of civil servants decided by the government, the deputies added a Envelope dedicated to the connective budget, voted this summer. The text provides for support of 430 million euros for the municipalities, of 120 million euros for the departments and 18 million for the regions.
The mayors will however have to juggle to hold their back -to -school budget, taken in the vice between the waltz of labels and the desire to avoid an explosion in the costs of public services. Especially those essential to the most modest of their citizens, such as school canteen. Thus, in Lyon, there is no question of increasing the prices for schoolchildren. “Of course, we feel the first effects of inflation on our budget, and we will have to take adaptation measures. But we ward off any repercussions on the prices of the canteen: households are already in difficulty, we n ‘Let’s not add to it, “said Audrey Hénocque, first finance assistant, public procurement and major events.
The ecological majority intend to preserve a major marker of his mandate, after having suffered controversy over menu changes, with a vegetarian alternative. Inflation, however, obliged the municipality to a pro -amending deliberation of the budget in July, to cope with an increase in electricity and gas bills of 1 million euros. A plan of sobriety and “targeted expenditure limitations” is envisaged.
“I refuse to increase the rates of the canteen while parents are already experiencing the consequences of inflation in their daily lives,” said the mayor of Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône) , Sophie Joissains. For the elected representative (Union of Democrats and Independent), it is a question of offering “the certainty of a complete and balanced meal to children”, in an agglomeration which, despite its bourgeois reputation, counts, according to INSEE, 14 % households under the poverty line.
“Being in management allows you to better control costs”
At the start of the school year, the prices will therefore be the same as those of December 2018. “However, the cost of a meal went from 9.96 euros in 2019 to 12.72 euros at the end of 2021. And for 2022, he should reach 13 euros “, calculates Sophie Joissains. “We make choices on our other expenses. And the fact of being on control [Central Centralized] allows us to better control these costs,” she explains.
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