Old Town Amber Deklic Grandi, The founder of the NGO "Restitution", which deals with the protection of property rights in Montenegro, is not giving up her fight to overturn the decision of the Municipality that, as she stated, deprived the residents of the oldest part of Budva of a normal life and denied them the rights that others have.
Although she sent an invitation to the Mayor two weeks ago Nikola Jovanovic, but also to the council of the Local Community "Stari grad", the Ombudsman Sinisa Bjeković, and the European delegation in Montenegro, Deklić Grandi encountered a wall of silence.
Deklić Grandi, who is an Italian citizen originally from Montenegro, yesterday sent another appeal to the same addresses, warning about the devastation of the Old Town and what the municipal decision to abolish parking at the Port Authority and the Old Bus Station has done to the residents within the medieval walls.
"Two weeks have passed since the municipal decree deprived the residents and owners of the Old Town of Budva of the right to park near the walls, even though they have a regular annual permit. The municipality abolished about 60 parking spaces in an authoritarian and unappealable manner, without even providing enough alternative space, leaving only a small space in the port area where residents' cars are piled up on top of each other. For the people affected by this decree, it has become impossible to lead a normal life, go to work or shopping (since supermarkets are quite far away), go to the doctor or take children and the elderly. We live here all year round, we have the right to lead a normal life even in summer despite the madness of the "tourist season" in which we are squeezed between the sea and the land, between the pressure exerted by the JP Morsko dobro with maximum exploitation of the beaches and the pressure exerted by the Municipality with maximum exploitation of the area around the Old Town," stated Deklić Grandi.
According to her, "the result is that the Old Town is transformed into an amusement park with a combination of electric cars that the Municipality bought without a tender, the Citadel turned into an open-air disco as well as the entire Old Town, souvenir and Chinese goods shops, pizza, French fries and pancakes for hasty consumers who then leave garbage, paper, drinks, bottles, cans on the streets without bins, the city walls devastated by open-air terraces and illegal structures."
“After the area around the Old Town was almost completely cleared of residents’ cars, delivery scooters now roam around, managing to enter the restricted area through various unguarded entrances and avoiding any control. At night, it is a kind of Wild West as scooters drive unhindered even on the streets inside the walls, which is quite dangerous for people’s safety. The people of the Old Town have an age-old connection with the sea, something that the new leaders from the interior have difficulty understanding. One example is fishing activity, which involves the movement of nets and goods with the help of vehicles, just as wine production, which is still carried out in some cellars, requires the transport of grapes or wood used in the kilns. Therefore, restricting their movements, trapping them and making it difficult to leave and return home is inhumane and illegitimate,” she emphasizes in the letter.
As she pointed out, even performing emergency interventions at home is very problematic, as is calling technicians for repairs.
"The Old Town is a forbidden zone, an inaccessible area. When a drastic ban suffocates the life of the Old Town, so that it can be an elite zone for someone else, then there is clear dehumanization and fraud against the residents despite the high property taxes paid in the so-called exclusive zone. It can be concluded that the removal of the parking lot reflects the desire to remove even the Old Town residents who may represent an obstacle to the ambitions of some politicians. The order to remove the parking lot is not based on clear legislation, and the promenade project cannot abolish secular rights such as the access of residents to their homes by their own means of transportation. Running the Old Town as a private company without civic sense is as much a crime as letting the police enforce a controversial order, as if it were a private security company," Deklić Grandi emphasized.
What many people are not aware of, she added, is that the civitas of Budva, of which the Old Town is a symbol, has a Statute that has never been abolished or revoked.
"The city of Budva enacted regulations that shaped centuries-old tradition and were later incorporated into the current Montenegrin constitution and legislative system. Within this framework, the municipal ordinance does not have precedence over the civil code," concluded Deklić Grandi and said that "the Old Town is not a circus stand and that it belongs primarily to its owners."
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