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Today marks end of Formentera's development consortium

Foto reunio cfdAt noon today, Friday, July 21, the executive board of Formentera's development consortium (CFd) convened for the last time in the assembly hall of the Formentera Council. Administration chair Jaume Ferrer and chief secretary to the chairman, Bartomeu Escandell, emerged afterward to give statements to the press.

Jaume Ferrer explained that the assembled group of CiF members, Govern office holders and representatives of the Eivissa Council had gathered to disband the CFd definitively. As he pointed out, that end game had been achieved by the meeting's closing.

The Formentera Council will now assume control of the CFd's management and subrogate any of the group's assets and obligations. The Council has got until December 31, 2019 to invest the €4 million in the CFd's reserves. That spending is to involve heritage acquisitions, environment and sport infrastructure and urban area upgrades.

The defunct group leaves behind a number of outstanding debts. Payment of one, valued at €5.1m, will become responsibility of the Govern balear. A second debt, of €1.9m, will be split between the Balearic administration (70%) and the Formentera Council (30%).

Councillor Escandell called the CFd's dissolution “part of an effort to streamline local government”.

Core CFd activities
Created in 2001 to bring under one roof funding from both the Govern balear and the Eivissa and Formentera administrations, the development group sought to use investment to reduce Formentera's infrastructural deficit.

As Chairman Ferrer recalled, the group focussed on purchasing land—including the plots now occupied by the Formentera hospital, the Ses Bardetes children's park, the barracks of the Guardia Civil and the plaça de la Constitució expansion in Sant Francesc— as well as street upgrades in Sant Ferran (carrer Major), Es Pujols (carrer Xaloc), la Savina (carrer Ponent) and the Porto-Salè neighbourhood.

The first local body to subsidise repairs of dry-stone walls and other homegrown trademarks, the CFd also bankrolled initiatives to bury overhead utility lines. The Council has already reserved part of its 2017 budget allocations for subsidies of heritage-related improvements.