Mykolaiv to restore «Public Budget» in 2026: ₴21 million to be allocated to finance projects

Today, on 26 November, the Executive Committee of the Mykolaiv City Council supported two draft decisions on the revival of the «participatory budgeting programme».

Tetiana Shulichenko, Director of the Economic Development Department, spoke in more detail about the content of the decisions during a meeting of the executive committee, NikVesti.

The first draft envisages a reduction in the timeframe for submitting, reviewing and evaluating proposals put forward by citizens. As Tetiana Shulichenko explained, these changes are related to the implementation of the public investment reform. According to her, the updated deadlines will make it possible to determine the winners in the summer of 2026 and plan the main budget expenditures for the programme in 2027 in advance.

«Due to the fact that public investment reforms are being implemented, the deadlines for the projects that will be the winners of the «Public Budget» programme to be included in the next budget year are being reduced,» the official explained.

At the same time, she stressed that the voting period will remain unchanged: 14 full calendar days are provided for this.

The second decision concerned the amount of funding for the «Public Budget». It is planned to allocate 21 million hryvnias for the implementation of projects in 2027.

«In 2026, projects will be submitted, selected and voted for, and in 2027, the first implementation will take place. 21 million hryvnias is planned for 2027,» said Tetiana Shulichenko.

She recalled that this year Mykolaiv City Council, together with Save the Children International, held a competition «Youth Public Budget». Tetiana Shulichenko emphasised that the programme showed high interest and activity among the citizens in this topic.

«It was exclusively donor funds. Thus, we analysed this story in Mykolaiv and realised that there is indeed a great demand for this initiative. That is why we propose to revive the programme «Public Budget» for the next years,» summed up the director of the Economic Development Department of the city council.

Mykolaiv's participatory budget

In September 2017, the deputies of the Mykolaiv City Council approved the Regulation «on the Public Budget of Mykolaiv. The city introduced a mechanism for involving the public in the allocation of funds from the Mykolaiv city budget.

In 2018, for the first time, Mykolaiv identified a project by Mykolaiv residents as part of the «Public budget». Nine large and nineteen small projects won and shared 10 million hryvnias. You can read more about the fate of the winning projects in the article NikVesti.

Subsequently, the residents of Mykolaiv proposed 111 projects for implementation in 2020 as part of the participatory budget.

In 2021, the residents of Mykolaiv submitted 166 ideas under the programme «Mykolaiv Public Budget for 2022», and 125 of them were allowed to vote. The winners were 40 projects totalling 20,347,980 thousand hryvnias. Among them are 12 large, 21 small, and seven social projects.

However, during martial law in 2022, no funds were allocated from the local budget for capital projects. And since the «Public Budget» provides for such expenditures, the implementation of all ideas was temporarily suspended.

In February 2025, a new participatory budget programme for 2025-2027 was approved in Mykolaiv. The total amount of funding for the programme will be over 45 million hryvnias.