This year, many municipalities in Ukraine have become more active in the management of municipal property. For the vast majority of them, this is a deliberate move to get things in order and make sure municipal property is used effectively.
At the first seminar of the training programme “Steps for Specialists. Municipal Property Management”, U-LEAD advisors emphasised the need to conduct an inventory of municipal property.
A total of 100 municipal officials took part in eight seminars and three workshops, as well as received over 100 responses on the forum. Eight consultations were held for officials of local self-government bodies to work on more complex cases.
“When my colleagues and I visited the facility, we did not only inspect it, but also recorded its general condition in an act, took photos, made a detailed description, and entered it all into a unified database,” shares Ruslan Shevaha, the Head of Property Fund of Horodenka municipality, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast.
The practice of the onsite visits was adopted by Rokytne municipality of Rivne Oblast. “We are currently compiling a list of properties. Sometimes, all that remained of a building was only walls... Working on the inventory allowed us to identify two abandoned properties, and we are currently working on returning them into municipal ownership,” says Serhii Novak, the Head of the Housing and Municipal Services, Transport, Public Amenities and Municipal Property Department.
Having complete information about the property owned, it is possible to make well-grounded decisions on its effective use. According to Viktoriia Kopchak, the Coordinator of the Training Programme on Municipal Property Management at U-LEAD with Europe, the legislative regulatory framework of concessions needs to be improved. The full-scale invasion has reduced investor interest in this type of municipal property use, but leasing and privatisation continue to be effective mechanisms.
The insights they got sparked the launch of small-scale privatisation in the municipality of Murovani Kurylivtsi, Vinnytsia Oblast. “We finally decided on a privatisation authority: we have chosen the option permitted by law that would enable us to work efficiently in this area. We also compiled a list of real estate in the municipality that is subject to privatisation,” says Valentyna Krasovska, the Head of Municipal Property Department of the Village Council.
Legislation updates that will come into force in August of this year were also discussed during the training process. Among other things, the participants discussed the need to rename municipal non-profit enterprises as non-profit municipal associations and to replace the existing mechanisms of operational management and economic administration. According to Oksana Dovhal, the Head of Municipal Property Management Department of Vatutine municipality, Cherkasy Oblast, the training process culminated in the development of a municipal plan for the implementation of new regulatory requirements, and the renaming of healthcare institutions will be among the items on the agenda of the extraordinary meeting.
Olha Dudar, a participant from Rivne Oblast, was positively impressed by the experience of the urban municipality of Uman, Cherkasy Oblast. Sarna municipality has now introduced an automatic countdown of days until the end of lease agreements. Seemingly a simple step, it greatly simplifies the procedure for monitoring existing contracts. In addition, this management decision is timely, given the changes in legislation on the specifics of leasing municipal property under martial law, when the vast majority of municipalities are returning to their usual procedures for extending contracts.
The U-LEAD with Europe team believes that the first steps, the first decisions made by the participants of the Training Programme on Municipal Property Management will drive systemic changes and empower municipalities to manage their property in a well-grounded, balanced and effective manner.
