Sienkevych wants to deprive district administrations of almost all powers: they will communicate with people and control

The draft of the new structure of the executive bodies of Mykolaiv City Council envisages a reduction in the powers of district administrations, which will no longer be the main spending units.

Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych told NikVesti about this during a presentation of the new structure of the city hall he had developed.

According to the mayor, it is expected that the reform of district administrations will take place at the second stage of the new structure, starting in 2026, if a decision is made to change the structure of executive bodies.

According to the mayor of Mykolaiv, district administrations will lose the functions of commissioning street cleaning, road repairs in the private sector and the elimination of illegal dumps.

«District administrations will effectively cease to be the main spending units. This will happen in the next stage. When all this «is settled», and the next issue will be that rayon administrations will have administrative functions, control functions, and administrative services. But they will cease to perform the functions of customers of works such as cleaning, landfills, mechanised cleaning, road paving in the private sector, etc. The roads will be transferred to the balance holder, ELU Avtodorig, which will deal with road maintenance issues,» said Oleksandr Senkevych.

As for subordination, now the district administrations will be under the authority of the first deputy mayor, not the vice mayor for housing and communal services.

«This is the first step in taking away uncharacteristic functions from them. In fact, the issue of green areas has already been transferred to the municipal enterprise «Mykolaiv Parks», the issue of large-sized waste removal has already been transferred to two municipal enterprises that are engaged in waste removal in the city. The issue of roads will remain, which will go to the balance holder. And in fact, they will only have administrative functions: to deal with information collection, communication, and the provision of administrative services. And even then, there will be no need for them as the main spending units. Because they will need to buy paper and organise some kind of work,» said Sienkevych.

In fact, he confirmed, the administrations will be the front office of the Department for the Provision of Administrative Services.

«Their main function will be to communicate with residents and maintain the level of service. They will also have a control function to see what MEs are doing on the ground and give signals,» summed up Kostiantyn Neviadomskyi, head of Ernst & Young's advisory practice in Ukraine, who had previously presented the results of an audit of the city hall structure and made recommendations for its renewal.

Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych believes that his fellow party members in the «Proposal» deputies Oleksandr Bereza and Hanna Remennikova, who head two of the four district administrations, will vote «for» such a decision. At the same time, he reiterated that they want to implement the changes to the administrations next year.

«One might say, what should be done when two of the city council members are actually heads of two districts? Will they vote in favour of changing the structure? I think they will, they will support this idea. Given the fact that by the end of this year the budget will have been formed and they will have already finalised their plans, starting next year... And maybe there will be elections, and next year they will not be deputies, or maybe they will be deputies, but they will or will not be heads of administration. Again, we are saying that today it is about the system, not about individuals. And they understand this,» said the mayor of Mykolaiv.

As a reminder, in May, the mayor of Mykolaiv wants to submit the issue of changing the structure to the «session hall» for approval.

Earlier it was reported that the draft new structure of the executive bodies of the Mykolaiv City Council envisages an increase in the number of deputy mayors to seven. It is planned to create the position of Vice Mayor for Digitalisation.

Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych presented a draft of a new structure of executive bodies, which was developed in accordance with the recommendation of the Ernst & Young audit. The new structure envisages a reduction in the number of key spending units, liquidation and consolidation of departments. At the same time, the mayor's office cannot yet say how much the number of executive body officials and their maintenance costs will be reduced.