«There won't be enough for everything», — Sienkevych announced a shortage of funds in Mykolaiv's budget for 2026

Mayor of Mykolaiv Oleksandr Sienkevych, photo by NikVesti

Mayor of Mykolaiv Oleksandr Sienkevych stated that the city's budget for 2026 lacks funds even for salaries and utility payments. Because of this, the question of which projects to finance first «will be very acute».

The mayor said this during an open staff meeting on Monday, 2 March, according to NikVesti.

«We currently have no funding for any issues in the city of Mykolaiv, except for salaries and utilities. In the near future, we will move on to approving a list of capital expenditures and public investments at the session, as well as redistributing 317 million hryvnias from last year's surplus. There will be very little money. Because we need to help the army and pay salaries. We do not have a 100% guarantee from the state that it will cover our additional needs in order to pay salaries in full. Let me remind you that the budget has approved an amount that corresponds to 82% of last year's budget. This means that today, there is not enough money to cover salaries and utilities. We will need to allocate part of that amount to cover this gap, so to speak. Therefore, the issue of selecting projects will be very acute. There will definitely not be enough money for everything. So prepare your projects and their defence,» said Oleksandr Sienkevych.

There is not enough money in Mykolaiv's budget. What is known?

The Mykolaiv City Council has appealed to the government and parliament for an additional subsidy from the state budget. According to the city's calculations, its own budget revenues for 2026 are only enough to cover 82.5% of its actual needs, and the financial resource deficit exceeds 1 billion 140 million hryvnias.

In total, budget revenues for 2026 amount to 5 billion 546 million hryvnias, while total budget expenditures amount to 5 billion 275 million 353 thousand 815 hryvnias.

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Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych stressed that the budget for 2026 is in fact a survival budget and does not cover all the needs of the community. In particular, the Mykolaiv budget does not have the funds to increase teachers' salaries, as initiated by the state.

Deputies also appealed to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and the Cabinet of Ministers with a demand to increase salaries for cultural workers. The document refers to the critically low level of wages in the cultural sector.

Instead, the government raised the base salary for cultural workers to 3,470 hryvnias. The Mykolaiv authorities said they would look for money in the budget to pay bonuses.

In addition to paying salaries, the city budget also lacks funds for routine and major road repairs, according to Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych. For example, the municipal enterprise ELU Avtodorig received about 80 million hryvnias less than it should have from the budget.

At the same time, during a staff meeting on 2 March, the director of the City Council's Capital Construction Department, Oleksii Savchuk, said that there is currently no funding for the repair of the reception department of City Hospital №3.

«Currently, there is no funding for the reception department of Hospital №3,» he said.

And during a staff meeting on 2 March, Gennadiy Izyumov, director of the municipal enterprise Mykolaivvodokanal, said that the enterprise needs additional funds for road asphalting work after the removal of potholes.

«We have more than 560 orders for asphalting, which have been pending since 2023. I wanted to discuss with you separately the possibility of additional funding to close these 'tails',» said Hennadii Iziumov.

Currently, the city authorities are preparing to reallocate 313 million hryvnias of free funds.