«We are engaged in mere make-believe»: Kim about the session of the Mykolaiv City Council, which was postponed again due to lack of votes

Screenshot of the broadcast of the session of Mykolaiv City Council on 11 September

On Thursday, 11 September, members of Mykolaiv City Council gathered for the fourth plenary meeting of the session to consider land issues. However, due to insufficient votes, the meeting had to be postponed again.

During the consideration of the issues, the votes of the deputies were barely enough to make decisions, NikVesti.

Vitalii Kim, the head of the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration, noted that out of 30 registered deputies, only 28 were voting, while the rest «were sitting out». He proposed to postpone the meeting.

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«30 deputies — 28 are voting, the rest are sitting and watching. I propose to end the meeting. No questions will pass, what are we doing, what are we doing? We are engaged in mere make-believe», he said.

After that, the deputies tried to continue their work, as the signalling vote showed 30 deputies present.

«So what is the question? 30 deputies and not enough votes», Vitalii Kim asked.

The deputies passed draft decisions that were put to a separate vote or had not been previously approved by the land commission. But each time, the mayor had to urge the deputies to be more active and wait until everyone had voted.

«This is not a kindergarten. We can look at the previous votes, there were 30 deputies, and now there are 27. You can't not vote and have no one know about it», added Oleksandr Sienkevych.

Before suggesting that the deputies move to a package vote on land issues that had been positively reviewed by the relevant committee, the mayor proposed to hold a signal vote again.

After that, it became clear that the session was attended by a critically small number of deputies — 28.

«This is a very large package containing almost 100 draft decisions... We have enough votes to form a package, but not enough votes to vote for it,» the mayor said.

Therefore, Oleksandr Sienkevych proposed to pause the session once again and announced a break.

As a reminder, on 3 September, the second plenary meeting of the Mykolaiv City Council was supposed to take place, where the deputies were asked to approve 57 land issues and budget redistribution. However, the meeting failed to take place due to the lack of deputies following a dispute between Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych and deputy Tetiana Dombrovska over the vote to reform the structure of the city hall.

The session continued on 4 September. During the session, Vitalii Kim, head of Mykolaiv's regional administration, responded to the doubts of city council members about the feasibility of funding the regional municipal guard from the city budget. He reminded them that the guard is involved in air defence and «90% of its work is aimed at protecting Mykolaiv».

At the session, the deputies also approved amendments to the budget for 2025. The city's revenues have increased by over 623 million hryvnias due to additional taxes and subventions from the state.