La Laguna Cleans Data for New Waste Fee, Digital Overhaul
La Laguna City Council has launched a €117,700 tender to update its census and property data, a crucial step for implementing a new waste collection fee and enhancing overall digital efficiency and tax management.
La Laguna City Council is upgrading its data systems. This important project is needed for the new waste collection fee, but it also follows state law and aims to make the council run more efficiently in the long term. Paqui Rivero, the Councillor for Finance, announced that people can voluntarily pay the new waste fee between September 1 and November 20, once property records are updated. To do this, the council has put out a public tender for €117,700 (including tax) to clean up its census and property data. This work is expected to take up to four months.
This update of resident and property information is crucial for the new waste fee to start. It affects about 160,000 residents and 70,000 homes in the municipality. The fee must be updated to cover the full cost of waste services, as required by Law 7/2022 (April 8) on waste and contaminated soils for a circular economy. The city council had already approved changes to the rules for the Urban Waste and Solid Waste Collection Service Fee. This means the service cost will increase by an average of 24%. However, the exact amount each household pays will depend on their property's value and how many people live there. There will also be discounts and reductions for certain situations.
But this data cleanup isn't just about the waste fee; it's part of a bigger plan for digital transformation. Carla Cabrera, the Councillor for Presidency and Planning, explained that the tender aims to align how the council manages its population register with the National Institute of Statistics (INE)'s online population register project. Once this is up and running, it will greatly improve how the city manages its census and allow for real-time information sharing with the INE.
The contract will also connect property details with the population register, linking them to the tax database. According to the tender documents, this step is designed to make tax processes more efficient, provide better information to residents, and clearly separate personal data from property data. This will create a clean and up-to-date housing census. Councillor Rivero highlighted that this process will not only simplify the council's yearly tax tasks but also give residents easier, more interactive access to their personal documents.