Bad managers of the perfect mayor, or the perfect plan of the bad mayor of Lviv Sadovyi? What is it about?

May 25 is expected to be an interesting political day in the city of Lviv. After all, the plenary meeting of the 16th session of the Lviv City Council is scheduled for tomorrow, and in the draft agenda consisting of over 300 items, item number 23 has sparked particular interest. This question addresses the “Cancellation of the decision of the executive committee dated 14.03.2023 No. 260 ‘Regarding the acceptance of the terms outlined in the Credit Agreement No. 53825 dated 30.12.2022, concluded between the Lviv City Council and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.’

It was precisely this issue that led to a dispute among the deputy corps in April, and with the words “F@ck, I’m shocked. A 15-minute break is announced.” Andriy Sadovyi closed the city council meeting.

By this decision, the executive committee took over the deputy’s powers and bypassed the regulations during the March session, supposedly voting for a technical solution. However, in reality, they unlawfully approved the acceptance of the terms of credit agreement aimed at supporting the activities of municipal enterprises– Lvivelectrotrans, Lvivavtodor, Lvivvodokanal, Lvivteploenergo and Zelenyi Misto.

While everything would seem good and right for municipal enterprises to function adequately, there is one ‘but’. In the period from 2019-2023 alone, Sadovyi allocated more than 5 billion hryvnias to support 10 municipal enterprises, including the aforementioned ones! Think about it: 5 billion in less than four years. This amount constitutes 35% of the Lviv’s budget for the year 2023, which means financing the city’s vital activities for over four months.

This raises the question: could it be that Mayor Sadovyi’s team is unable to provide guidance on the city’s public utilities, or is Mayor Sadovyi deliberately leading the city into a debt pit?

One might think that municipal enterprises are struggling, and employees receive meagre salaries, but that’s not the case. For instance, in March 2023, the average salary of an employee of Lviv Municipal Enterprise ‘Municipalna Varta’ exceeded 22,500 hryvnias, while employees at Lviv Municipal Enterprise ‘Lvivavtodor’ received over 24,000 hryvnias, Lviv Municipal Enterprise ‘Administrative and Technical Management’ earned about 26,000 hryvnias.

Employees of municipal enterprises should undoubtedly receive a fair wage, but let’s ask how much a doctor at a municipal polyclinic or a teacher at a secondary school earns, and whether the city has allocated 5 billion hryvnias for education or healthcare over the course of three years?

Yet even with a decent salary and Andriy Ivanovych’s ‘sincere’ concern for municipal enterprises, the leaders of these companies are not entirely immune to human behaviour. Recently, the former heads of Lviv Municipal Enterprise ‘Municipalna Varta’ and Municipal Enterprise ‘Museum of Folk Architecture and Life’ in Lviv named after Klymentiy Sheptytskyi received a suspicion of embezzlement of particularly large amounts of property.