Will the municipality be obliged to assume the debts of the city of Rezekne?
The Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development (VARAM) has encouraged the five countryside to be combined with the existing buildings in 2025. WE CAN make a proposal by referring to a Constitutional Court judgment that every municipality must also be a national or regional development centre. This would mean a combination of Rezekne's municipality with the Rēzekne countryside.
The municipality of Rezekne welcomes THE idea of developing regional centres in order to strengthen the economic growth of municipalities and the well-being of the population, but in view of the situation with the budget of the city of Rezekne and the difficulties with existing cooperation, the planned merger is assessed by justified concerns, whether it will bring the expected benefits to the people of Rezekne.
In the previous programming period, only certain municipalities could participate in several European Union fund programmes, that is, the funds available to the city of Rezekne were not available for the municipality of Rezekne. Consequently, the municipality, even very much, would not be eligible for the absorption of these funds. In all programmes where the municipality met the conditions for eligibility, we have participated and have acquired project funding opportunities.
Despite this, in recent years, the municipality of Rezekne has implemented various projects worth approximately 55 million EURO, including the reconstruction and insulation of local government objects, road reconstruction and other projects that improve daily life for residents of the municipality.
Although large works have been performed, the debts of the municipality of Rezekne are small – only 15,1 million EURO (EUR 10 637 869 – from the former Rēzekne municipality and EUR 4 472 883 from the former Vilnius municipality) or 539 EURO per unit of the municipality.
At the same time, the urban debt burden is more than EUR 88 million or EUR 3835 per scar (information from the State Treasury website). Undoubtedly, after the merger, this heavy burden of debt will also lie on the shoulders and wallets of the municipality. In addition, the sites created by the city also require significant amounts for their maintenance annually.
The municipality of Rezekne is very responsible and sustainably treated with the municipal budget, assessing priorities and financial opportunities. As a result of the economic work and the savings of the Covid pandemic, by the end of 2020, the municipality paid a commitment for repayment of the principal amount of the loans for the whole of 2021. At the same time, the city council of Rezekne was forced to take a kind of “fast credit” at the beginning of that year – a national short-term loan of less than one million euros – to fill the hole in the budget and to pay salaries, as well as to cover the daily spending.
Of course, the municipality could also carry out grand and non-economic projects. Who would not like the pool in Malta, the ice Halle Rogovka, or the municipal built SpA centre at Lake Razna. We are, however, responsible for our taxpayers' money by implementing projects that both benefit citizens and are “lifting” to the budget not only to build but also to maintain them.
As regards the evaluation of maintenance expenditure, we can, as a successful example, mention the “beacon” auction of the water tourism development centre last year. Although the media was brought to an aegance for the low rent, we can now confirm that it was the right step for maximising the efficiency of the society – the lessee “beacon” has retained as a tourist object and maintains it in good order. In addition to the economy of maintenance expenses, rent and immovable property tax payments, the financial gain of the local government shall be more than 35 thousand EUROS annually.
The pride is our businessmen. More than 1700 companies are employed in the municipality of Rezekne – stable farms, domestic producers, large industrial plants. Most of these are RSEZ SIA “Verems” (turnover in 2020: 32,8 million EURO) and RSEZ SIA “LEAX Rezekne” (turnover in 2020: EUR 25,5 million). In total, more than 550 employees are employed in both companies – both the municipality and the city. This is why the city of Rezekne sometimes mixes and renders these companies as their own.
The municipality of Rezekne finds a variety of ways to support our entrepreneurs. The management of the Rēzekne Special Economic Zone and the entrepreneurs engaged in the development of the spatial plan. In order to create a more favourable environment for investors, opportunities for business activities in the industrial building area of Rezekne were expanded.
At times, it is not even necessary to invest large municipal funds to help businesses develop. For example, this year, by giving 60 thousand EURO TO the business project competition, the municipality supported 14 new and existing entrepreneurs, each of which creates at least one new job. If a businessman is able to create and provide a job at least for himself, it is already a big investment in the growth of the municipality.
THE proposal also provides for the extension of cooperation in various areas between countryside and their adjacent municipality by 2025. Although the municipality of Rezekne wants to cooperate and has initiated various ideas, the experience so far shows that the interest of the Rēzekne country in cooperation is minimal. Here are some examples.
Development planning documents.
Administrative territorial reform law and laws and regulations stipulate that the Rēzekne municipality and the Rēzekne State should jointly develop two development planning documents – a strategy for sustainable development and a development programme. Similarly, the law stipulates that the State of Rezekne is the leading partner in the drafting of documents. Although the documents have to be submitted for public consultation by November 15, that year, until the publication of the article on 23 August, a real work from the city is not even started. The municipality of Rezekne shows an active interest and willingness to cooperate so that the documents drawn up are qualitative and balanced with the most important issues for citizens and businesses. Unfortunately, the interest and the initiative for productive communication are now only visible from our side. The activities and passive attitudes of the city may result in financial consequences, that is, by failing to draw up documents within the time limit laid down by law.
Development of suburban areas.
During the development of the Rēzekne municipality, a negative attitude was received from the city council of Rezekne against the municipality's willingness to organize the area in the area of “agglomeration”. In letters, the city council of Rezekne objected to the creation of new villages in the suburban area. In essence, the Rēzekne council argued that, for example, the Plans would develop and become an even more attractive place for living with an orderly transport infrastructure (street network, access opportunities for operational transport, clarification of roads and street red lines, etc.) and a fully-fledged civil engineering supply network (energy supply, water supply, sewerage systems, etc.), which, over time, is intended to be implemented by the municipality of municipality and other former small garden areas.
Animal graveyard.
The municipality of Rezekne repeatedly called on the city to cooperate in the establishment of the animal graveyard by offering an area where both municipalities could be equally involved in the establishment and maintenance of the graveyard. We offered the land to the city, counting that most of the leads would be directly from the residents of Rēzekne's apartment houses, not the people who owned their own land. However, in June 2021, in a letter of reply, the city council of Rezekne refused financial participation, while acknowledging that the city was also topical. This would be an example of a real benefit for urban people. Like elsewhere in Latvia, there would be a place for the hostess to say goodbye to his pet animal instead of discarding it into a waste container or a night cover buried in Anchupan Forest. Unfortunately, there was no audible ears in the corridors of the city council.
In the last time, in the mass media, the expressions of the President of the City Council of Rezekne, in which the country of Rezekne is compared with a prosperous oasis in the middle of the desert (salmon - Rezekne municipality), appear once a time. It would be helpful to think that the oasis could also lack water, as the threshold for urban borrowing commitments is already high and new credits to co-finance European Union projects, the city can also not be received next year, while the municipality of Rezekne is balanced. It is likely that the oasis hopes for a charm from the wilderness of the surrounding desert.
Rezekne Municipality