Marriage in sight in Seine-Saint-Denis. This Wednesday, the mayors of Saint-Denis, Mathieu Hannotin, and Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, Michel Fourcade, announced that they wanted to merge their cities by 2025 in order to pool services such as the municipal police or the canteen, in a interview given to Parisian.
If this union between Saint-Denis (110,000 inhabitants) and Pierrefitte-sur-Seine (35,000) were to succeed, the new town would become the largest in Ile-de-France after Paris, ahead of Boulogne-Billancourt (92) which has 117,000 residents.
A community within the city
“Our municipalities have no physical borders. There are streets in Saint-Denis that enter Pierrefitte, and vice versa. The administrative separation did not ultimately make much sense. And it is above all a choice that will allow us to carry out a common political project, ”explains Mathieu Hanotin.
“Pierrefitte will be able to develop much faster and we will weigh much more with the State, the Metropolis, the region…”, considers for his part Michel Fourcade, specifying that Pierrefitte will evolve into “a delegated municipality integrated into the municipality new “.
Concretely, the inhabitants of Pierrefitte will be able to benefit from the municipal facilities of Saint-Denis, the holiday centres, the free canteen, its commercial property or even its municipal police 24 hours a day.
A decision criticized
“On unfit housing, which is one of our common priorities, today we have 36 agents who take care of it in Saint-Denis, compared to three in Pierrefitte. Tomorrow, we will obviously be more efficient at 40”, assures Mathieu Hanotin. The deputy for the constituency of Saint-Denis Stéphane Peu reacted by questioning “the democratic legitimacy of such a decision”, in a press release.
“Neither of the two mayors having proposed or even mentioned this idea during the municipal elections of 2020, they do not have a mandate for this project”, he believes. “Therefore, it is inconceivable that such a merger which affects the identity and the future of two cities with a secular history could bypass the consultation of the population”.
Mayors want to “give themselves time”
The deputy of Seine-Saint-Denis Eric Coquerel “struggles to understand the reasons for this merger”. “How would this improve the lives of our fellow citizens, bring them closer to public and municipal services, to the proximity of their mayor and the elected members of the municipal council? I especially fear that it is the opposite, ”said the elected official in a press release.
The two mayors assured that they wanted to “give themselves time for discussion and exchanges with the citizens”.
“On the other hand, none of the municipalities that have merged in recent years has had recourse to a referendum. We are on a subject that cannot be decided by a vote for or against”, according to Mathieu Hanotin.