The session of the Municipal Assembly (SO) of Tivat lasted almost eight hours today - the first in the last 45 years of the city's history that was held on Sunday.
It took the councilors that long to get through the old order of 22 points, and the changes to the Decision on real estate tax attracted the most attention and controversy.
After the decision of the Constitutional Court that it is unconstitutional by law and by-laws to make a difference in the amount of taxes between physical and legal entities, which the local administration of Tivat had to comply with, the coefficient for the calculation of real estate tax on construction land for legal entities was reduced by four times. , so from January 1, 2025, when the amended decision will be applied, it will be the same as for natural persons, 0,5 percent.
Up to now, the real estate tax on undeveloped construction land in Tivat has been calculated at a rate of two percent for legal entities, similar to that in the surrounding towns.
At the same time, the rate for natural persons was increased from 0,3 to 0,5 percent, but the corrections of additional coefficients in the second part of the calculation formula, as pointed out by the administration of the mayor Željko Komnenović (Narod Pobjeđuje), tried to mitigate the effect of the increase in this tax for citizens. .
Nevertheless, the citizens of Tivat will pay a 27 percent increased tax starting next year, but according to Finance Secretary Lidija Bakalbašić, this will not result in a large increase in the income of the city budget from the real estate tax on citizens' land, which now totals around 160.000 euros per year, because that amount will increase by only about 44 thousand euros.
The opposition, however, criticized this decision, and the authorities did not hide their dissatisfaction that the decision of the Constitutional Court forced them to give up a kind of financial penalty for companies that own the most attractive plots of land in the city and do not bring them to their intended use.
"Unfortunately, after the decision of the Constitutional Court, we were put in a situation where we had to do this in order to comply with it. We had to think about how to formulate a new decision so that it would be constitutional and equalize the obligations of legal and natural persons, without at the same time burdening citizens and let's not question the budget revenues," Komnenović said, adding that work must be done on devising a new mechanism that will force the companies that manage some of the exclusive locations such as Blue Horizon, Župa or the island of Sveti Marko to finally bring them to their intended use.
Ilija Janović (Croatian Civic Initiative - HGI) believes that behind this decision of the Constitutional Court is the pressure of the construction lobby in Montenegro and that it is an additional mechanism to try to put pressure on the local population who do not want to build on the entire land they own, but he doesn't even want to sell his grandfather.
The representative of the non-governmental organization (NGO) Matica Boke, who used the "free chair" institute, Ivan Starčević, agreed with this, pointing out that this decision is against everything that the NGO has been standing for for years and that it is aimed at discriminating against indigenous people.
He advocated for the amendment of the Law on Real Estate Tax and the introduction of a mechanism so that especially large investors, for whose projects the state expropriated the private property of its citizens in previous years, and who did not implement those projects within the agreed deadlines, "will be severely taxed for such land".
In response to Janović's appeals that he and the local Krtoljska lista did not stick to their earlier positions on protecting the interests of the local population, the Vice President of the Municipality, Jovan Brinić, said that "this is absolutely not fair, but unfortunately, the Constitutional Court has ordered that it must be done this way." works".
"This is wrong, because if you already equate physical and legal entities in the matter of taxes, then you should also equate them in all long districts, and not that a natural person - an entrepreneur is responsible for all of his assets, and legal entities only for the amount of their founding capital, which can be only one euro," Brinic said.
Dejan Risančić (Democratic Serbian Party - DSS) told the HGI councilors to "talk about discrimination, but forget to mention decentralization" and called out Adrijan Vuksanović (HGI) that as a deputy in the earlier convocations of the Parliament of Montenegro, he decisively influenced the adoption of some of the interests local self-governments of the most pernicious, most rigid and centralist laws.
"Here you and your coalition partners have been in power in the country for almost four years, and you have not changed any of those laws for which you have been calling me names for so long. Even if you change them, it will hardly be better if the institutions of the system we need are to apply them, atrophied as they are now," Vuksanović said, adding that even as a current member of parliament, he is ready to take the initiative in changing the law, "but our power in this is limited because we are the opposition, and HGI does not act politically".
Tonći Janović (Movement Evropa sad - PES) said that "if we want to go to Europe, the laws and decisions of the Constitutional Court must be respected", and that the local administration's "hands are tied in this matter, but through this kind of amendment to the Decision on Real Estate Tax won as much as possible so as not to financially threaten the citizens of Tivat".
Vatroslav Belan (Liberal Party - LP) said that "with such thoughts and attitudes that are heard, I am not sure that we will ever create an entrepreneurial way of economy in Tivat".
"Don't make it our policy to 'slap on the ears' of legal entities, because in the long term, that is not even in the interest of the citizens themselves, whom the populists are trying to elevate," he said, while Sanja Vuković (Tivatska Akcija) responded to Ilija Janović's calls to this is how the people of Tiv are financially burdened, answered that this is true, but that it is nowhere near to the extent to which the previous DPS-SD-HGI local government did it.
"It is true that this is now EUR 44.000 more than the total annual tax allocations of all natural persons - land tax payers, but it is not nearly as much as you burdened them with, for example, EUR 900.000 spent for non-purpose purposes that you did not use for the construction of the MR 2 road. already spilled for who knows what else," Vuković pointed out.
A longer polemic was also conducted between the opposition councilor and the business director of the Center for Culture, Goran Božović, regarding the report on the work of that public institution (JU) for 2023.
The opposition criticized him for his assessment that the situation he found in CZK when he became director a year ago was, as Božović said, disastrous and neglected in the administrative and organizational sense, that he had not yet appointed an artistic director of CZK, which he had to do according to to the Law on Culture because he, as a business director, cannot carry out the tasks of creating programs if he is not an established and proven cultural creator, which Božović is not, and because he spent 23.000 euros on the purchase of a new official car.
HGI councilors also accused Božović that "due to the lack of an artistic director, he did not see and recognize the importance of two manifestations that the Croatian national community requested to be held in the premises of the CZK - the promotion of Mihail Radojicic Šok's novel about the attack on Dubrovnik in 1991 and the reprint of the medieval "Budvanska songbooks".
Božović replied that he will personally "assess whether CZK will support some programs organized by others besides our program, depending on our available technical and other possibilities at a given moment".
"We will certainly not support some programs with political connotations," he said, alluding to the unsustainable promotion of Radojčić's novel.
He pointed out that he has abundant documentation that proves previous major omissions and shortcomings in the administrative and organizational management of the CZK "which date from ten years ago to just a year ago" and told the councilors of HGI that for the programs they care about "you have a whole House of Culture in Donja Lastvi, you have a place to do it, and not have to look for cakes over bread," referring to the premises of CZK.
"No one will ghettoize the Croatian national community here and limit it only to the House of Culture in Donja Lastva, which was built by the Croats for the needs of the then 'Croatian Falcon', but that building belongs to us and to you today. It is not enough for us and we will ask you again that we organize some programs in more representative and larger venues of the CZK, because it is a public institution and facility that belongs to all citizens, including Croats who pay taxes from which the CZK is financed. Your understanding of our national community is unacceptable to us," replied Vuksanović Božović replied that it was "a low-level exchange of theses on a national basis" and "vile subterfuges that will not pass you by".
The members of the authorities whose votes approved Božović's report praised the work of the CZK in the last year, while the HGI voted against its adoption.
A long discussion was also held about the proposal of the Decision on the construction of a local object of public interest - a smaller parking garage behind the "La Roche" hotel, which Ilija Janović called "a scalamería that is destroying the city center" and called out Mayor Komnenović for personally not respecting the communal order because he parks his car in unauthorized places "for which there are photos because people follow you".
Komnenović interpreted Janović's performance as aimed at protecting the private interests of some of the citizens who protest against the construction of a garage in a place where there is already a public parking lot because it does not suit their personal interests.
"While I am here, there is not and will not be an individual who will prevent something that is in the public interest of all citizens. You were the vice president of the municipality when many harmful moves were made for the interests of the city, and in the interests of privileged individuals and companies. At the time you were in the vice-presidential chair, you studied at a private college where the then mayor Siniša Kusovac (DPS) also taught, but it seems you didn't have enough time to learn some things," Komnenović retorted to Janović.
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