Mykolaiv adjusts its budget 3 weeks before the end of the year: ₴7 million for salaries, ₴53 million for utilities

Mykolaiv City Council wants to reallocate the budget three weeks before the end of the year, photo by NikVesti

The Mykolaiv City Council is preparing to reallocate the budget for 2025. In total, it is proposed to approve 244.4 million hryvnias in subventions and grants, as well as redistribute existing resources — money is being withdrawn from capital expenditures to be spent on current needs, including salaries, food, and utilities.

The draft decision on budget reallocation published on the website of the Mykolaiv City Council was analysed by journalists at NikVesti.

The city's total revenues amount to 6.7 billion hryvnias, while expenditures are 7.4 billion hryvnias. At the same time, the general fund has a surplus of over 1.09 billion hryvnias, and the special fund has a deficit of almost 1.97 billion hryvnias.

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The changes were initiated by the Department of Finance and are related to both the receipt of new state subventions and grants and internal redistribution among spending units.

This draft decision proposes to allocate 244 million hryvnias, which is additional funds received by the city through subventions and grants.

• ₴135 million is an additional subsidy from the state budget to support communities affected by Russian aggression.
• ₴61.3 million is a subvention for school meals.
• ₴40 million — subvention for additional payments to teachers.
• ₴8 million — funds for the construction and reconstruction of housing for temporary residence.

The interlocutors of NikVesti in Mykolaiv City Council reported that the city received these funds several months ago, and they had already been distributed and spent by the main administrators of the sessions by the mayor's order. Now, the city council is making a purely formal decision by including them in the city's main budget document.

Deputies discussing draft decisions at a session of the Mykolaiv City Council. Photo: NikVesti

However, in addition, the draft decision of the city council provides for the redistribution of existing funds between managers.

We would like to remind you that three weeks ago, all budget payments were suspended in Mykolaiv, as reported by sources in the Mykolaiv City Council. The main spending units were instructed to suspend all payments for expenditures that did not relate to protected items, namely public sector salaries and utility bills. At the time, it was reported that the reason for this was the lack of budget funds to cover the protected budget items until the end of the year. The problem had been known for a long time, as the annual budget had not included funds for mandatory payments by the end of the year. The mayor's office hoped that budget overruns and savings during the year would help find the funds. However, this did not happen.

Later, the mayor of Mykolaiv, Oleksandr Sienkevych, said that they were looking for 60 million hryvnias in the city budget for salaries and utilities.

We analysed the proposed changes to the distribution of expenditures in Mykolaiv's budget and calculated that 7.2 million hyrvnias would be allocated for salaries and utility bills (in the budget, this is an expenditure item «Management and administration in the relevant area») for the city's budget managers, not the 60 million hryvnias previously mentioned by the mayor.

In addition to the money «for the maintenance», much larger amounts are proposed to be redistributed to other areas:

2.9 million hryvnias is being taken away from the executive committee from «Implementation of land management measures» (Department of Architecture and Urban Development).

The Department of Housing and Communal Services will receive an additional 225.8 million hryvnias (including subsidies from the state budget) as a result of the budget amendments:

• ₴5 million will be allocated to support the activities of organisations providing housing and communal services;
• ₴36 million will be additionally allocated for landscaping,
• ₴14 million will be spent on water treatment. In total, the amended budget for 2025 will allocate ₴63 million for this area;
• additional ₴10 million for road maintenance and development. In total, about ₴123 million will be spent on this item of expenditure in the budget, taking into account the changes.

However, the largest amount additionally received by the Department of Housing and Communal Services is 53 million hryvnias, which will be spent on replenishing the authorised capital of utility companies, but it is not known which ones and for what specific needs.

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Earlier, in a commentary to NikVesti, Mykola Lohvinov, director of the utility company «Mykolaivoblteploenergo», said that he hoped to receive an additional 11 million hryvnias for water and 10 million hryvnias to pay Mykolaivgaz for gas as a result of the budget reallocation.

We asked Artem Sapozhnyk, Deputy Director of the Department of Housing and Communal Services, Head of the Planning and Tender and Contractual Work Department, for a comment, but as of the time of publication of this article, we have not yet received a response from him.

Also, the draft decision on amendments to the budget proposes to take 69.5 million hryvnias from the Mykolaiv Capital Construction Department (CCD). It should be noted that according to the information on the implementation of the city budget provided by the Department of Finance, this particular unit systematically fails to fulfil the budget from year to year. As of 1 December, the MCC had used only 33.2% of the budget for the period from January to November, spending only 84.7 million hryvnias out of the 304 million hryvnias budgeted for this year. At the same time, cash expenditures of other departments of Mykolaiv City Hall range from 70 to 95% of the plan for this period.

On Tuesday, 2 December, the planning and budget commission of the city council was supposed to consider this document, but the meeting did not take place. This, among other things, was the reason for the postponement of the session of the Mykolaiv City Council scheduled for 4 December to the following week.

For more information about what happened at the session on 27 November and what decisions were made by the Mykolaiv City Council, see NikVesti: Disputes over schools, crisis of commissions and debts of a heating company: what happened at the session of Mykolaiv City Council.