The Municipal Assembly (SO) of Kolašin, on the third day of its session, which ended late last night, with the votes of the ruling majority, adopted, among other things, the Spatial Planning Program for this year.
That document, according to the opinion of the opposition and Social Democrats (SD) councilors, is late before the local parliament.
As explained by the Secretary for Spatial Planning, Communal Affairs and Traffic, Ljiljana Rakočević, part of the projects from that program have been started, and some have been completed, according to the draft.
She said that the program was submitted to the assembly in June, and that it was not possible before because of the epidemiological situation, that is, the NKT measures and the impossibility of holding a public hearing, but also a number of other challenges.
According to Rakočević, the work of her secretariat is hampered by the fact that "from 2014 to 2017, not a single planning document was prepared, and the planning documentation is in a very bad state".
She informed the councilors that the procedure for changing the Spatial Plan had been initiated.
"Through the amendments to the Spatial Plan, we have been given the opportunity to elaborate in detail all those objects of public interest, which are not resolved by the existing documentation, and obtain direct guidelines for their realization. These are certain roads, the bus station, then, the location for the city garage, the market... "We are actively working, and the Spatial Plan is in the phase of receiving an opinion from the Review Council and will soon be on public discussion," she said.
According to Rakočević, a lot of work on road infrastructure rehabilitation has been done so far.
Asphalting of city roads and local roads has been completed, she explained, through a contract on the improvement of local infrastructure with the Public Works Administration. The value of these jobs is 300.000 euros.
According to the secretary, the tender for the reconstruction of Vojvode Mine Street will be announced by the end of the year.
The adoption of the Spatial Planning Program at the end of September for the head of the councilor club of Democratic Montenegro (Democrats) Vladimir Martinović is "an insult to the intelligence of councilors and the public".
"You were obliged to adopt this plan 30 days after the adoption of the capital budget. The budget was adopted in December, 30 days after that there was no corona. This does not exist in any other municipality... You have spent thousands and thousands of euros without the Assembly giving its consent. You do not respect citizens and citizens' money. What about the reconstruction of Vojvode Mina Street? In July 2019, you told the media that the project documentation for that street had been completed and that tenders for contractors were about to be announced. You announced the works for the end of the summer tourist season of that year. Here, we see that there is nothing from the works this year either," he said.
According to Martinović, the adoption of the program beyond the legal deadlines entails criminal liability.
He said that neither the councilors nor the public know who set the priorities for the works.
His party colleague, Bojan Medenica, pointed to the works on the road infrastructure, which were carried out "on the basis of problematic criteria" and "selective asphalting of some roads or their parts".
According to the opinion of Aleksandar Dožić from the Democratic Front (DF), the priorities of infrastructure work should be different.
"The sequence of moves dictates that the main sewage collector should be built first. It is an exceptional problem. The reconstruction and upgrading of that system is a necessity, but the project should be completed to the end, that is, a water purification plant should be built. That is a burning issue. On the site where the waste water is now stored is a huge problem... The reconstruction of the city center should be done in accordance with the needs of the city's development, because the project task cannot now predict what the investors expect. With smaller investments in the water supply network, significantly better quality of supply could be achieved "- claimed Dožić.
Bojan Zeković, the head of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) councilor club, was interested in who decided on the implementation of the Program until now, when it was not done by the SO.
"This is not someone's private matter, so you decide where to work, according to who someone is on good terms with. I already asked the President of the Municipality who made the decisions about asphalting roads, private and public areas, who determined the priorities and whether there is technical documentation . You made a promise that the reconstruction of the sewerage system in the narrow part of the guard will be completed in 2020. Here, there is a possibility that, by the end of this year, a tender will not even be announced. supremacy within the DPS nor the majority in the parliament. It is necessary that we jointly agree on priorities, and that the government is elected based on how much of it has been realized," he said.
Zeković called the adoption of the Program in September "planning of what has already been done". He was also interested in whether, as part of the expropriation within the DUP, the Sports Zone for the purpose of building the road will be divided into plots, which were previously owned by the municipality.
"It is incomprehensible that the program was submitted to the Assembly in the sixth month, and that we are adopting it in the ninth. The program should have been adopted in the first quarter. The members of the SD will abstain, and we want to send a message to the executive power and the leadership of the Assembly that they should find a model of how perform their work better," said councilor Jelena Bulatović from SD, who is part of the Kolašin ruling coalition.
Members of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), as well as Milan Đukić from the Group of Voters (GB), praised the efforts of the competent secretariat, as they said, with quality works on road infrastructure.
Nikola Lakićević (DPS) reminded that the citizens are suffering a lot, "because Kolašin is the only municipality in the north that did not participate in the public invitation issued by the Ministry of Agriculture and the international fund for the development of local road and water infrastructure in 2017".
Those failures, he said, are the responsibility of the former government.
Đukić praised the efforts of the executive authorities on the arrangement of roads in the villages of Gornji and Donji Pažanja. The paving of the road to the Ćirilovac monastery is particularly significant, he said, as well as numerous works on the arrangement of the roads to the katuns.
Salaries of officials "returned to the old"
Councilors of the ruling majority voted in favor of the decision, which returns the salaries of municipal officials and senior management staff to the level from before the adoption of the Program of Temporary Measures to Mitigate the Crisis Caused by the Coronavirus.
As Finance Secretary Dragan Bulatović explained, the reduction of salaries by 20 and 15 percent for officials and secretaries was specified by the decision for three months, so it is now necessary to "bring them back to the legal level".
He explained that it is not a question of salary increase.
The councilors of the ruling coalition did not vote for Martinović's amendment, which requested that the decision to "return the salary to the old" be applied from January 1 of the following year.
Martinović said that the decision on reduction was made when the situation caused by the corona virus in Kolašin, but also in the country, was significantly better than now.
"In the meantime, the socioeconomic situation in Montenegro worsened, the parliamentary elections ended, and at the first session of S, after that, look at the miracle, the Kolasin government restored salaries to their original state, and I say that you are increasing them again." We can call it an increase or return to the old one, but there is no logic in doing it in the midst of an economic crisis. I believe that your salary reduction was a political trick, with which, before the parliamentary elections, you tried to show yourself as benefactors and responsible towards the city. I offer you a compromise," he said.
The Democratic councilor also recalled the "purchase of expensive cars in the municipality in the midst of the crisis", and the "attempts to deceive citizens in this regard".
DPS councilors Milica Šćepanović and Duško Šćepanović reminded that the municipality was among the first in which the wages of officials were reduced, but other measures were adopted to alleviate the economic crisis.
"The program of measures covered three months. Today's decision is a technical matter. I would like to praise the Municipality, which was among the first to adopt the Program of Measures. It is true that there were no infected people then, but then everything stopped and we didn't know how long it would take... If the opposition councilors are going to be useful, let them propose something innovative, some other measures, which will help the citizens." Scepanovic said.
The opposition also sharply criticized the report on the execution of the budget for the first six months of this year. As he said, the wasteful spending of money for work contracts is particularly problematic for Martinović.
He explained that persons can be hired for a special type of activity by means of a work contract, and that the way in which the executive power does it is a great deal of illegality.
The opposition also criticized the high amount of money spent on one-time social benefits in the first six months.
A decision was made on the new composition of the Board of Directors (BoD) of the utility company.
The earlier proposal that one of the members of that body be the brother of the mayor Milosav Bulatović was changed by the proposer with an amendment.
The previous proposal of the decision was evaluated by the Democrats as an example of nepotism.
SO Kolašin during three days of work adopted, among others, decisions on residence tax, membership contribution to TO, lease of municipal real estate...
Also, the reports and work programs of the Municipal and Water Supply and Sewerage, the Local Action Plan for Youth and the Dog Population Control Program...
Bonus video:
