This is the relationship that everything Noyon Wait. He who has to settle the eternal dispute which points each time the accounts – today catastrophic – of the city of Noyon are mentioned. Who is responsible for the financial sinking? The former mayor (until 2020) ex-PS Patrick Deguise ? Or the mayor elected after him, the LR Sandrine Dauchelle ?
Oise weekly obtained the report – for the time being confidential – control of the Regional chamber of accounts (CRC) relating to the period 2018 until today. And mayor Sandrine Dauchelle is literally gripped there by financial magistrates.
In this dense report – 52 pages, plus 12 pages of responses from Mayor Sandrine Dauchelle -, the CRC has returned the fruit month of work (the control was initiated in February 2024, this final observations report is dated September 2024*). The magistrates have combed the city practices from 2018 to 2023 mainly, the exercise 2024 not being completed at the time of rendering the final report.
“An alarming financial situation”
Here we will examine the purely financial aspect of the report, which interests the taxpayer. The CRC describes without surprise “an alarming financial situation”, “which has deteriorated strongly” from 2018 to today. “All the fundamental indicators have deteriorated,” notes the CRC which dates, each time, the start of the problems with the fateful “year 2021”. Sandrine Dauchelle was then at the helm. And the mayor accused opponents and media of blackening the painting, and of “wishing her to fail”.
The CRC highlights two mechanisms. First, under Sandrine Dauchelle, the “management products stagnated”. Understand the financial income. The CRC writes in particular that its policy of lower taxes from 2021 to 2023 – the “main category of products collected” and therefore larger source of income – “led to depriving the municipality of more than 500,000 euros in resources, since 2021” . The mayor then had, in 2024, at the request of the prefect, decided to ultimately spectacularly increased local taxes.
Could the city afford to make a cross on such incomes all these years? No. Because at the same time, the CRC discovered “a rapid increase in management charges”. The regional chamber of accounts is alarmed in particular of the increase, already noted here or on the benches of the opposition, staff costs.
An increase in staff costs from 2022 to 2024
“Personal charges have increased by more than 19 %” over the period 2018 to today, develop magistrates “in particular in 2022 and 2024″. While Sandrine Dauchelle had tried to justify this increase by that of the index point (decided by the State) the CRC sweeps her arguments: if this increase is indisputable (” + 153,000 euros in 2022 and + 370,000 euros in 2023″)) It remains “much lower than the increases noted”. If the personal budget has exploded, this “inflation proceeds from another origin”, estimates the room.
The CRC first notes “increasing workforce during these two years (2022/2023)”. Mutualisation requires, the trend was before dauchelle downwards. In 2018, the city thus had 241 agents, then 221 in 2019, before a brutal rise: 243 in 2020, 234 in 2021, 244 in 2022 and 247 in 2023. For Sandrine Dauchelle 26 more agents than when she resumed The town hall.
How is it possible? The CRC illustrates by an example, that of “the workforce of the municipal police” which “increased by 10 agents from January 2020 to January 2024”. A cost of an additional 630,000 euros to bear each year. But now no more personal bodyguards during the demonstrations.
This slip of the staff budget “is mainly carried by the remuneration of contractual agents,” said the report. Contractual agents can replace for example an agent on sick leave or absence. But having a fixed -term contract signed is also a way of recruiting a framework, excluding public service. This is how Sandrine Dauchelle proceeded for a number of her service directors.
Always more load slippages
On the spending side still, the CRC also notes an increase in general charges (excluding agents therefore) “from almost 36 % from 2018 to 2023 going from 4.3 million to 5.9 million”, details the report. Here, the mayor defended herself by invoking inflation of the energy price in particular. And it is true that the “energies” position exploded: +1.1 million calculates the CRC which notes an inflation of 104 % in 2022 and 26 % in 2024. Like everywhere.
But this is not the only explanation. “Subsidies to private organizations” have also climbed over the past three years, adds CRC. “Here again, the level of generosity of the town has followed a reversal trajectory to that of its financial means”, shout the magistrates. Associations that have not seen the color of this money generally, before seeing their subsidies melt in 2024, will appreciate …
Sandrine Dauchelle pointed
“At the end of the period,” sums up the CRC, and therefore on the Dauchelle years, “the charges increased in a disproportionate way compared to the evolution of the products”. And the magistrates do not want to hear the excuse of energy: “It belonged (to the mayor) to adopt the necessary management decisions”, they write. Clearly: everything was anticipable. But was not.
Recipes that stagnate. Charges that increase. And a result: “the self -financing capacity” of the commune “has disappeared”, notes the CRC, which again sees a rocking point in 2021, year or “financial balance has collapsed”. The CRC sums up: from a “gross operating surplus satisfactory until 2020 (4 million per year)” there is “from 2021” a “brutal and continuous degradation”, the commune “proving to be incapable of containing the increase Management charges while it is partly responsible for the stagnation of products ”.
More technical conclusion: late 2023, the gross surplus increased from 4 million per year to 1.2 million. The self -financing capacity (CAF, which represents the city’s ability to initiate projects) increased from 3.5 million in 2020, to 400,000 euros in 2023. Nothing.
What about borrowings for schools?
After this demonstration, can we still attribute the situation to the loans of school groups subscribed by Patrick Deguise? It is the most common argument of Sandrine Dauchelle. An argument that she touched on the magistrates. But there too, the CRC comes to sweep the refrain. By explaining that the municipality had the means of this debt on the detached, despite, after the realization of schools, a strong debt: “If the level of debt of the town was, from 2018 important, it still remained sustainable in a context of control of charges, ”judge the magistrates.
Worse, the magistrates, on the other hand, question the loans taken out by the mayor. Also, the magistrates write: “The mobilization of 3 million new loans (in 2022/2023 editor’s note), is unbearable for the community.” Loans, underlines the room, at least partly affected … to reimbursement of loans. Not quite an investment for the future this time.
Of “serious payment difficulties”: millions waiting
The consequence of this situation is as we revealed a few weeks ago, the inability that the city now pays its suppliers. The CRC thus pointed out, at the end of 2023, “689 blocked payment interns” for a sum of “2.3 million euros”. A situation that started in 2023 according to the CRC.
Here, the magistrates claim that the mayor has cheated. “As the municipality’s financial situation was deteriorating, it has played the irregular practice of it in not transmitting certain invoices to the public accountant”. No invoice: no debt. This is how the Chamber discovered “186 additional invoices” to those declared for an amount of “800,000 euros”.
However, CRC doubts the “exhaustive” nature of this funny assessment, the city itself being able to present a specific state of suffering invoices. The CRC thus points to a lack of piloting, in particular “the absence of a cash plan”. What the city finally tried to set up at the start of the school year (the process is not completed).
The magistrates allowed themselves on this subject a ruthless comment: “The reaction of the town appears to be out of step with the severity of the situation. She limited himself (…) to ask her creditors to delay the exigibility of the sums due, therefore contenting herself with postponing the repayment to better fortune. ”
Murderous conclusions
In its conclusions, the CRC does not spare the Mayor Dauchelle. Refuting to see in the borrowing of all the origin of all the evils of the community. A situation which stems above all from a deterioration in the level of raw self -financing capacity “. The reflection, judges the chamber, “of management difficulties”.
“With such a degradation of its financial indicators, the municipality has seriously compromised its development capacities in the short and medium term,” concludes the CRC which completes: “the community no longer has the means to develop”.
And also …
We will see in a future article how the CRC has also “questioned” in this report on multiple times the “probity” of cases led under Sandrine Dauchelle. Stressing in several files problems in the attributions of public contracts, markets which landed with a certain lack of “transparency” in the hands of his comrades from … Les Républicains.
*We will return to the dates and the timing of rendering of the report in a subsequent article
