Phase 1.2: Restructuring of municipal bodies in the Unions of Municipalities

The Union of Municipalities in Puglia already exists, and the intuition of those who wanted them was right: alone, small municipalities cannot sustain the services that people need.

The flaw is not in the idea, but in the design. They were built by misreading the geography: municipalities put together for political proximity rather than actual distance, unions too small to support a hospital or a transportation line, and others so large as to become unreachable.

And there is one thing that we could not see in 2009: the territory has aggregated anyway, but in other forms. Today, the same municipality belongs to five or six different geographies, each with its own borders. Patù, to give a verifiable example, is together:

• all'Unione dei Comuni Terra di Leuca, che ha attivato il minibus a chiamata;
• all'ARO 8, che raccoglie i rifiuti con altri otto comuni;
• al GAL Capo Santa Maria di Leuca, che con ventidue comuni programma lo sviluppo rurale e turistico;
• a un Ambito territoriale sociale, che gestisce i servizi alla persona;
• a un distretto socio-sanitario della ASL.

Five perimeters, five tables, five lists of municipalities that do not coincide. The problem today is not that there is a lack of aggregation: it is that there are five and none of them hold them together.

And not all of these forms work in the same way. In certain territories, it is the Union that has done things; in others, it is a GAL, or an ARO, or an Ambito, while the Union has remained on paper. It is not a competition between legal forms to be won once and for all: we look at each territory and empower those who are working best there. If the Union works, we strengthen the Union; if the GAL works, we strengthen the GAL.

Therefore, the plan today asks for something different from what it asked for in 2009: not 'redo the Unions', but give power to those who have shown they know how to do it. The reorganization starts from the study of phase 1.1 and a single question: 'here, who has already produced value?' That entity is assigned competences and resources, regardless of its legal form.

Just one word, to avoid weighing it down. From now on, this plan will continue to say 'the Union', because in most cases it is indeed the Union and it is the name that people recognize. But it applies to the entity that governs the area in that territory, regardless of its form: where a GAL, an ARO, or an Ambito has done things, everything that follows applies to it.

And the value is not determined by numbers. Numbers are almost always good: committed funds, spending percentages, accounted-for works. But they are numbers on paper, and they measure whether a procedure has been completed, not whether a territory has changed. The real feedback is simpler to see and harder to manufacture: do people use that service? does it still exist after the funding has ended? can those who live there say what has changed?

The proof that numbers are not enough can be read in phase 2.3: Masseria Tagliatelle, beautifully restored and delivered in 2017, had all the numbers in place, and for six years it has not served anyone.

And the same applies to entities: existing is not enough. In the territory there are those that have had skills and resources for decades without anyone being able to say what they have changed, and others that people would not even know how to name. It is not to them that other skills are given, and it is not useful to name names: we look at who has produced, and we start from there.

It should also be kept in mind that forms change. Tools that seemed like the future have been absorbed by others in the course of a programming: freezing a list of entities today would be repeating the mistake of 2009, when we wrote «Unions of Municipalities» because they were the novelty of the moment.

Therefore, the list of those who deserve power is not built by reading a register: it is built by asking those who inhabit the territory. It is exactly the work of phase 1.1, and it is the reason why it comes before everything else.

And we are asking you seriously. In your territory, which entity has done things? A Union, a GAL, a consortium, an association, an area: write it in the discussion below, with what it has achieved. What arrives is evaluated and, if it holds, enters the plan. This list is not closed, and it is right that those who live in those places complete it.

The three measures to build the perimeters remain: the distances in kilometers, the total number of inhabitants, and the characteristics of the leading municipality.

However, one thing changes regarding size: a minimum is indicated, not a maximum. In 2009, we wrote «between twenty-five thousand and forty thousand inhabitants». The minimum serves, and it is the reason for everything: below a certain threshold, a service is not sustainable. The maximum, on the other hand, has been disproven by the facts: the on-demand transport of Terra di Leuca serves sixteen municipalities and one hundred and twenty-five thousand inhabitants, and it works; the GAL Capo Santa Maria di Leuca brings together twenty-two. A rigid ceiling would exclude precisely the experiences that are succeeding.

It is the condition for the municipalities to stop being ten administrations that divide the same things, and start behaving like a single territory.