Local roads that need to be crossed by a house, a building in an enclave, construction near the sea, a dialysis unit, a large number of quarries, centralization of spatial issues, compliance with lower and higher documents - these are the main complaints and problems that the Barani and Baranke presented at yesterday's discussion on the Draft Amendments to the Spatial and Urban Plan (PUP) of the Municipality of Bar, for which they showed great interest.
The team that worked on this document did not provide preliminary answers to citizens, but emphasized that suggestions should be submitted in writing by April 11, and some of them left the Bar Assembly hall shortly after the formal end of the debate, while several dozen citizens were in the hall and one at the podium.
The amendments to this important document were presented to them vaguely and insufficiently precisely, assessed one citizen and was greeted with applause. Others pointed out that the presentation was not well done since it only talked about generalities, not specific things, and that the presentation mainly highlighted the text read in theses.
They advised that it would be better if they were presented with the exact changes in this document instead of technical terms and divisions that they do not understand.
The second presentation on the Strategic Environmental Assessment Report was not even shown on the large screen set up in the hall. On behalf of the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and State Property, headed by Slaven Radunović, Marko Batrićević, head of the working team Dr. Svetislav Popović and spatial planner Ljiljana Đondović spoke.
The Strategic Environmental Assessment Report was presented by Danilo Barjaktarović.
The first man of Bar, Dušan Raičević, addressed the full hall of citizens at the very beginning and said that he felt a responsibility to inform them that the PUP was adopted by the Bar Assembly at the end of 2018 and that it has been officially in force since then.
He emphasized that yesterday's public debate is "a continuation of a centralist spatial planning practice that has been in effect since 2018," and thus the amendments to the Bar Municipality's Urban Development Plan are not being made at the initiative of that local government.
"I would like to inform you that at the beginning of this month, new legal solutions were adopted in the parliamentary procedure, which return the possibility of spatial planning to local governments, so we can expect a new public debate relatively soon, where we will discuss new spatial planning solutions," said the Mayor of the Municipality of Bar.
He also pointed out that the amendments to the Bar Municipality's SPA are being adopted at a time when the umbrella planning document, the Spatial Plan of Montenegro (SPCG), whose adoption is expected to be relatively soon, has not yet been adopted. The Special Purpose Spatial Plan for the Skadar Lake National Park zone has not yet been adopted, and he said that some basic initiatives for amendments to the Special Purpose Spatial Plan in the Coastal Zone have already been launched at the ministry level.
He asked the developers whether the amendments to the PUP were harmonized with the PPCG so that tomorrow they would not be in a position to have two inconsistent documents, and he particularly emphasized traffic solutions that are still not fully defined by the PPCG.
The guidelines regarding tourist content in special purpose zones are highly debatable and will certainly be discussed, he assessed, since they affect almost the only green oases that Bar has.
He informed the proponents that the Municipality of Bar has submitted a proposal to the Constitutional Court of Montenegro for the assessment of the constitutionality and legality of the Decision on the proclamation of the protected area as a nature park Katič. He believes that this should be taken into account and that this decision was made to the detriment of the investment in Maljevik and that the decision of the Constitutional Court must be respected, which he believes will be made quickly and that the decision on Katič will be invalidated.
"At least Bar is not a city of quarries," said Raičević, adding that this document envisages the opening of new ones.
"I think it's too much, I think it's too much and ultimately potential locations that are in zones intended for housing and tourism development that can absolutely disrupt the ambient integrity of our municipality are unnecessary and need to be further considered," he said.
Raičević's explanation was greeted with applause by the citizens, and Batrićević from the relevant ministry responded that there was a representative of the Municipality of Bar in the audit commission and working team and that all documents were prepared in accordance with the legal procedure. They will, as he said, take into account the suggestions of the Municipality of Bar.
Đondović said that perhaps it is good that these documents are being prepared in parallel and that it is called concurrent planning, so that is completely acceptable.
Doctor Željko Ivanović, university professor of traffic and transport and member of the Municipal Council for Monitoring the Implementation of Amendments to Spatial and Urban Planning Documents, said that the Amendments to the SPA used data from 2013, 2014 and 2015, which are not relevant to this document, so he suggested that they be updated.
Ivanovic said he would have liked this process to have gone a different way, to have waited for the adoption of the PPCG before adopting the PUP. This plan did not have the necessary basic studies, but is linked to a study that was done for the needs of the PPCG, which in his opinion is not satisfactory because it did not provide any valid guidelines.
He accused Popović of copying some pages from Ivanović's previous studies and said that this was not the problem, but that these studies were done 20 years ago, during which strategic changes occurred. He proposed the introduction of a traffic network that would be valid and used for all future design.
Popović replied that Ivanović was using the substitution of theses since this was not a new PUP but amendments to the existing one. Batrićević said that it was very important for citizens to know that the Municipality of Bar would soon adopt its PUP proposal when its jurisdiction for this was returned to it.
Vesna Čejović criticized the fact that the public debate was organized four days after the Draft Amendments to the Urban Planning of the Municipality of Bar was published on the website of the Government of Montenegro, and it has over 400 pages of textual content, and a few days are not enough to read and analyze this document.
She assessed that this was a violation of European directives and wondered why this was all being done in a hurry instead of following the procedure proposed by international directives.
Ranko Jokanović, Srećko Knežević and others spoke out about the same problem – a local road in Bjeliši that is supposed to pass over 15 houses, which these citizens have been loudly opposing for months, and which "Vijesti" has written about on several occasions.
They once again demanded that this road be relocated and run over the neighboring plot owned by the Municipality of Bar. They once again emphasized that this was being done for the benefit of investors close to the local authorities and said that they would not agree to this and would defend their homes with their lives if necessary.
Popović said that this problem is evident and that it should be solved and perhaps the traffic solutions that will be accepted by the audit commission should be reviewed. "We are not here to demolish houses," he said.
Miloš Šušter, who worked on spatial planning in Bar in the 1980s, also criticized the Draft Amendments to the Urban Planning Act and the outdated data used. His colleague Miško Đikanović assessed that after certain moves by the ministry, they no longer trust them.
They and other speakers emphasized that spatial decision-making should be returned to the Municipality of Bar and its citizens, which was always greeted with applause.
Surgeon and director of the Bar Hospital, Dr. Igor Karišik, said that they have started several important projects for the strategic development of the Bar Hospital, but he asked planners to take into account an important plan for them to expand the hemodialysis part of the hospital.
Towards the end of the public debate, the situation was quite chaotic, as some citizens were at the podium and others were speaking individually to members of the working team for drafting the document being discussed through the assembly podium. This made it difficult to hear all the objections and suggestions that the citizens of Bar had, and a little after 14 p.m., part of the team left the hall and Batrićević asked them to return, which Đondović did, who also did not stay long, so Batrićević took notes and spoke to a few citizens who remained over the counter.
Bonus video:
