The mayor of the metropolitan region “Oborishte” Georgi Kuzmov, who is a former journalist from BNT, published a post on Facebook in which he explained why the new administration has been unable to deal with the consequences of the snowfall during the weekends for several days now. “Now” includes the message without abbreviations, as it quite clearly describes the total bureaucracy that reigns in the Metropolitan Municipality at the beginning of the mandate of the new mayor Vasil Terziev. The following is the full text written by Kuzmov:
I am somewhat grateful for this “wet” snow because it paints a very clear snowy picture of problems that have existed for a long time.
For me, as a citizen and, more recently, an administrative person, it seems unacceptable that fallen trees and hanging broken branches after Sunday’s snow have been standing on the streets for more than 3 days. I’m just as angry as you.
I, as the mayor, although 15 days old, am part of this wrongly organized system.
These days, apart from everything else, I am trying to understand why the system is not working, not only in “Oborishte”, but also in the whole city, and with a not so terrible snowfall.
My analysis is in the first person and what I hear and learn I want to share with you.
1. The first thing I did very early in the morning on Sunday – November 26 was to call 112 about the first fallen tree I saw in the area. There was no connection with 112. The head office in Oborishte municipality did not respond either. I was surprised that no one on duty called me. I later found out that the plant had also blocked and shut down.
2. I decided to look for the representative of “Titan”, the company responsible for cleaning the streets from the snow and collecting the fallen trees and branches, which were hundreds, everywhere. After the conversation, I understood that the company cannot fulfill orders, if they are not made with a request from the Metropolitan Inspectorate, because their activity will not be reported and paid for. But still, if I really care, they can try to do something outside the requests. The thing was hundreds of fallen large branches!
3. In the Oborishte region, there are several inspectors sent by the Metropolitan Inspectorate, who, together with ecologists from our municipality, described fallen branches and trees in order to send them as a reference to the Metropolitan Inspectorate. But at that moment the Metropolitan Inspectorate was understandably bombarded with thousands of messages from citizens and inspectors from all areas coming in at the same time.
4. There were fallen trees that had done a lot of damage to houses and cars, but the rule was that they were not to be removed until the insurance companies came.
5. To the Oborishte area, there used to be a BKS (Public Works and Public Works) that is its own brigade for maintaining the territory with equipment and people. Now there is no such brigade in the area. BKS is used externally, for which there is an annual budget of BGN 30 thousand to maintain the inter-block spaces in the entire area, but not for the street trees that lead to the Green Systems of the Capital Municipality and no one has the right to do anything with them, no matter what happened, without asking them and asking for permission, by releasing a request that must be processed for priority. I don’t know who and how sets the priorities for all of Sofia!? Any intervention by the regional administration in this activity is a violation!
6. “Obviously”, winter comes at the very end of the year, when the district administrations have spent all the budget funds and do not have any pre-planned financial buffers for responses to more serious extreme situations like this. It is better to have funds planned to remain and be returned to the budget than to have no extra money for disasters that occur.
7. The story with the parks is similar, they are also led by Green Systems and the Capital Municipality, which are also supported by an external company, in our case it is “Cvetomania”. She is responsible for the parks. There, too, the regional administration is powerless and with its hands tied! Garbage, water fountains, lighting, trees, benches… we can’t touch anything.
8. The river bed of the Perlovska and Vladaiska rivers and the adjacent green spaces and trees are also served by the private company “Rai stroi”. We can only ask them for assistance through a request to the Metropolitan Inspectorate.
9. I will conclude by saying that I think for some reason (probably lack of maintenance money) the convenient thesis has been pushed over the years that if you cut down the trees it will cause them to die. To such an extent did this claim become dogma that many people and civil movements were ready to lie down before the masts, trucks and pruning crews, if only to save the trees that had been marked with a cross by the specialist ecologists. All of us older people remember that if not every year, then at least every 2 years, the branches of the trees were trimmed and the diseased ones removed. Let me clarify – tree branches are like our hair, no matter how much you cut it, even 0 number, it gets stronger, stronger and nicer – it’s the same with branches. Our luck in not having such snow damage has been the warm and snowless winters of recent years. No one has recently campaigned on the importance of trimming tree branches. It was even said the opposite. Any ecologist and person who understands ordinary physics knows that the crown of a tree should not be much wider and higher than the length of the root system, especially in the city.
People rightly say “Mayor, you are the face – you are in charge!” and they will be right, because they do not care how wrong the organization, logistics and the whole system of action is, not only in extreme cases, but even on ordinary days. Having been elected and the people have voted for me, I would like to be in charge of a district that is actually accountable to the citizens, and not be blamed for bad management decisions and a misguided organization bound by heavy contracts and imposed for years. I am not a fan of the created centralized form of government in Sofia, where regional administrations have no rights and are only a screen in front of the people, while the public resource runs out without real control and effect for the people. The new Municipal Council of Sofia must arrange this puzzle correctly and anew. This should change soon! Vasil Terziev and the new capital administration have already imposed sanctions for BGN 120,000. of some of the cleaning companies for their inadequate and poor response. But this, of course, is not enough. It will take time to unravel all the tangled knots that the old 12-year rule left as a legacy. It will take time, but it will happen.
2023-12-01 19:51:55
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