What Odesa City Council members will vote on, 15.11.23
According to Odesa’s official city website, an extraordinary session of Odesa City Council will take place tomorrow, 15 November 2023. Until yesterday, the council members themselves did not know which matters were to be put to a vote. As reported on 14 November on Facebook by Ms Kvasnytska, information about the draft decisions is simply being concealed: “Tomorrow at 11:00 there is an extraordinary session of Odesa City Council. The draft decision placed on the agenda has not yet been provided to council members for review. As I understand it, most will not even read it. The conciliation council meets today at 15:00; what questions can arise when we have not seen the draft? It is all a sham! The main thing is to show the community that funds are once again being allocated to the Armed Forces of Ukraine and that Odesa residents’ protests are unfounded. However, the issues surrounding the two programmes through which funds go not only to the Armed Forces must be examined by law enforcement, because council members have no access to the primary materials and no council committee analyses them! Everything is presented orally, taking the word of people who cannot be trusted!” As far as Zelenyi Lyst knows, the draft decisions became available to council members only in the evening. We note that, according to the metadata, the files in question were last modified at 20:10.
Now, to the substance of the documents.
The agenda concisely provides for just 2 items:
1. Amendments to the municipal targeted programme “Safe City of Odesa” for 2020–2024, approved by Odesa City Council decision No. 5797-VII of 18 March 2020. 2. Amendments to Odesa City Council decision No. 1012-VIII of 30 November 2022, “On the Budget of the Odesa City Territorial Community for 2023”.
Separate amendments were also added to these draft decisions, which were prepared by the Executive Committee of Odesa City Council. The amendments were introduced by Odesa City Council’s Standing Committee on Planning, Budget and Finance.
Analysing the amendments
1. Increasing funding for the municipal targeted programme “Safe City of Odesa” by almost 10 million hryvnias. Amending the substantive part of the programme by increasing funding for units of the National Guard of Ukraine by 2.5 million hryvnias and for a military unit whose number is concealed by almost 7.5 million hryvnias. 2. Amending the city budget, proposing to reduce budget expenditure on the municipal targeted programme “Safe City of Odesa” by almost 44 million hryvnias (marking this with a note) and directing those funds to the Department of Education to finance preschool and general secondary education institutions. At the same time, this amendment contains no changes to the substantive part of the “Safe City of Odesa” programme. The note itself also sounds odd: “In the draft decision, budget appropriations were reduced and directed towards determining additional budget appropriations for the Department of Municipal additional budget appropriations for the Department of Municipal Security of Odesa City Council”. Which version of the draft amendments to Odesa’s city budget this refers to is unknown.
Two points add further spice to tomorrow’s session
The first is whether Odesa City Council’s Standing Committee on Planning, Budget and Finance has any authority at all to introduce amendments to the draft budget of the Odesa City Territorial Community. The second is that the names of military units have disappeared from the municipal targeted programme “Safe City of Odesa”. Whether even council members will be able to trace this money is unknown. The public is guaranteed to be deprived of that opportunity. Under Security Service of Ukraine order No. 383 of 23.12.2020 (paragraph 1.4.4.), information about the actual names of formations and military units is not classified as a state secret.
Thus, tomorrow’s session raises numerous questions
The main ones are: – Which officials of Odesa City Council’s executive bodies bear personal responsibility for preparing the draft amendments to the city budget and the municipal targeted programme “Safe City of Odesa”? – Which specific draft decisions will Odesa City Council members consider? – Has the Executive Committee of Odesa City Council adopted decisions approving the figures in the draft decision that council members will consider at tomorrow’s session? – Which specific military units are being allocated funds under the “Safe City of Odesa” programme? – What specific amendments will be made to the city budget?
There is no point even asking whether the council members themselves managed to make sense of all this overnight. We can only hope that the money will go towards something urgently necessary and very much needed ))).