The state is drawing up a new PUP for four times more money

President of the Municipality of Tivat Željko Komnenović and Minister of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and State Property Slaven Radunović signed an agreement on the adoption of the spatial and urban plan of the municipality of Tivat.

The document states that the Municipality and the Ministry have agreed that the Government will adopt a new main spatial planning document for Tivat "in the manner and according to the procedure prescribed by the Law on Spatial Planning for a state planning document."

The Municipality will provide financial resources for the development of the Plan in the amount of 270.000 euros and pay them into the account of the State Spatial Planning Agency of Montenegro, which will create the new Tivat SPA.

The Agreement, however, does not specify the deadline within which the Agency should draft the new RIA, or by when the Government should adopt the document in its final form, after the public debate has been completed.

In accordance with Article 49 of the Law on Spatial Planning, local planning documents are adopted by the assembly of the local self-government unit, while the law provides for the possibility for the Government, exceptionally and with the agreement of the local self-government, to take over the adoption of a local planning document.

Creating the SPA in this way will cost the city of Tivat almost four times more than the document was supposed to cost the government, which several years ago started creating it according to old legal solutions on spatial planning and construction of facilities, which centralized the adoption of spatial planning documentation at the state level.

The current Tivat Urban Development Plan expired in 2020.

The government of the then Prime Minister Zdravka Krivokapića In September 2021, in accordance with the then applicable legal solutions, the Ministry of Interior adopted a Decision on the development of amendments to the Basic Spatial Planning Document of Tivat and allocated 75.000 euros from the state budget for these purposes. The deadline for the development of amendments to this basic spatial planning document for the area of ​​the municipality of Tivat, which is the smallest in Montenegro with an area of ​​46 square kilometers, was 12 months from the date of signing the contract with the development manager. However, the team that developed this planning document, led by the development manager, a graduate architect Aleksandra Tošić Jokić, never fully completed the work, and the state, in the form of the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and State Property, has not announced to the public whether and how much of the 75.000 euros allocated for this purpose since 2021 has been spent so far on the development of the amended PUP of Tivat, which was never completed or adopted. Now the development of the PUP is starting again from the beginning, but at a price four times higher than the one that the Tivat local government will pay.

When asked why they did not choose to entrust the development of the new PUP to a renowned foreign spatial planning bureau, when they are already paying so much for this service, Komnenović told reporters that the state agency will develop the new Tivat PUP in the "most efficient way possible and in accordance with the needs of the city and its future development."

Komnenović pointed out that the current SPA was valid until 2020, and that although it is formally still in force, he believes that this spatial planning document is outdated and no longer meets the needs of the city.

"After several unsuccessful attempts at amendments and additions, the Municipality decided to entrust the development of a completely new plan to a state agency. This decision was made due to the assessment that this would be the most efficient way to obtain the necessary planning document as soon as possible," said Komnenović, noting that he heads the state agency. Svetlana Jovanovic, “which had already been previously involved in the work on the spatial planning documentation of the Municipality of Tivat, which additionally influenced the choice.”

"That was the reason we decided to go for the state Agency. We hope that Jovanović and her team will manage to complete that document in draft form by the end of the year, in order to solve numerous spatial problems in the city and map out its further development," said the Tivat mayor.

Komnenović also emphasized that the new PUP must respond to the city's key problems, including traffic, parking, waste disposal, and the development of municipal infrastructure.