Renewed structure of Mykolaiv City Hall again fails to receive support from the City Council Committee

Members of the City Council Committee on healthcare and social protection have re-examined the draft updated structure of the executive bodies of the Mykolaiv City Council, but again did not support the proposed changes.

This became known during a meeting of the commission on Tuesday, 25 November.

During the previous review, commission member Oleksandr Medvedev asked whether the number of executive bodies had changed after the new structure was formed, but he did not receive a clear answer. This time, the meeting was attended by the chief architect of Mykolaiv, Yevhen Poliakov, who explained that after the transfer of the cultural heritage protection area from the Department of Culture to the Department of Architecture, the number of staff would increase by one full-time unit — from 60 to 61.

«There are 61 staff members. To cover this area, I plan to have 4-5 specialists deal with this issue. Because we need to work with this. This is an area that has not been implemented in the city», said Yevhen Poliakov.

He also explained that the department already has units that inspect land plots, dismantle temporary structures and control the flow of documentation. In his opinion, these functions can be partially combined with the protection of cultural heritage, but cultural heritage should be the priority of their work.

In response, Oleksandr Medvedev pointed out that the number of staff members in the Department of Culture does not change, which calls into question the effectiveness of the redistribution of powers.

Oleksandr Medvedev also commented on the proposed changes to the structure of the housing and communal services block. In his opinion, the reduction of management levels could have a negative impact on the quality of management, as the housing and utilities sector is critical to the city's infrastructure.

Dmytro Bezdolnyi, Director of the Housing and Communal Services Department, agreed with the criticism. He stressed that the reduction of managerial positions creates risks of losing experienced staff.

«Management positions are being reduced and this is a problem. After all, the department has a lot of work to do even now. The fact that you say that utilities are poorly managed is very easy to explain. Half of the employees of the department that oversees utility companies are currently working on filling in registers of damaged housing, participating in commission inspections, and so on. I simply don't have enough people to allocate them separately. Therefore, the activities of utility companies and their control suffer a little in this area. And by reducing the management level, we are losing specialists, because an experienced specialist will not work in an ordinary position», said Dmytro Bezdolnyi.

After the discussion, the committee members put the structure issue to a vote, but the draft decision again failed to receive the required number of votes.

It is worth reminding that at the last meeting, on 18 November, the councillors also lacked the votes to support the updated structure.

In addition, on 14 November, members of the Mykolaiv City Council's Standing Committee on Land Issues also failed to support the new structure.

It should be noted that in late August, Mykolaiv City Council approved an updated structure of the executive bodies of the city hall, which, in particular, provides for the liquidation of the anti-corruption department as an independent structural unit and its merger with the executive committee. At the time, city council member Andrii Yermolaiev, who headed the department, opposed the decision.

In September of this year, the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption recommended that Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych create a separate, independent and functionally independent anti-corruption unit in the city council. The NAPC's letter emphasises that such units should operate autonomously and be responsible for preventing and detecting corruption.

What Sienkevych proposes in the new structure of Mykolaiv City Hall

Back in April, 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 is not yet able to say how much the number of executive body officials and their maintenance costs will be reduced.

At the same time, the draft of the new structure of executive bodies of 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.

The draft of the new structure of the executive bodies of Mykolaiv City Council provides for a reduction in the powers of district administrations, which will no longer be the main spending units. The heads of the two districts, who are also deputies, publicly reacted to this: Oleksandr Bereza and Hanna Remennikova.

At the same time, it was reported that Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych believes that councillors should not combine representative and executive functions, and therefore should not hold positions in the executive bodies of the city council.