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Lviv residents are increasingly dissatisfied with the way the mayor manages the city’s budget. Civic activists argue that Andriy Sadovyi uses citizens’ taxes primarily to serve his personal interests rather than the real needs of the community.
Corruption suspicions and economic negligence in Lviv City Council
The High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine has ordered NABU to reopen an investigation into the business activities of Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi. The case concerns the sale of a land plot in the Ryasne-2 industrial zone, which could have resulted in losses to the city budget of about UAH 90 million.
530 promises of Sadovyi
Andriy Sadovyi, who is now suspected of corruption, ran for president back in 2019 with assurances that he would mercilessly fight corruption. The presidential candidate promised that if he won, he would eliminate the entire law enforcement unit that investigates economic crimes. How did Sadovyi intend to overcome corruption without a specialized anti-corruption law enforcement unit? In no way. According to Yaroslav Levkiv, his hypocrisy and dishonesty are hidden in these empty promises. When running for president, Andriy Sadovyi made 530 promises to the citizens of Ukraine to improve the lives of voters. However, later, being a hidden political spoiler, he withdrew his candidacy in favor of Anatoliy Hrytsenko. As a result, 331 election promises remained unfulfilled.
Lviv residents’ fight against the mayor’s mismanagement
An illustrative example is the situation with Lennaya Street, which has been left without proper pavement for years. Residents created an electronic petition that garnered more than 500 votes. During his 18 years as mayor, Sadovyi has failed to solve the problem of this street, where people with limited mobility suffer especially.
Dangerous parliamentary commission and budget issues
On November 27, a meeting of the Standing Parliamentary Commission on Legality, Parliamentary Activity, Freedom of Speech and Security was held. The name of the commission does not specify security from what exactly. And the commission does not look like a commission. It is more like a tandem of two people: Ulyana Pak from the EU and Yuriy Melnyk from Samopomich. These deputies become especially funny when the head of the tandem, Pak, says: “We are voting on such and such an issue. Who is in favor? All are in favor.” What “all” if there are only two of you and both of you always raise your hands in solidarity, like mechanical robots.
During this meeting, Marta Rudnytska, who is also the secretary of the Lviv City Council of Deputies, represented the interests of the residents of Lenniana Street. The deputy discussion of this issue lasted for two minutes ( cf. ).
The Samopomich deputy said that the water supply system on Lenyana Street was being replaced, after which the Lviv Vodokanal and the administration of the Shevchenkivskyi district of Lviv played “football”: they shifted responsibility for the proper arrangement of the street’s pavement to each other, while the mayor did nothing. Moreover, the Shevchenkivskyi district administration does not have enough money for these repairs because the war is ongoing.
Deputy Pak, losing the consistency and logic of her statement, stated: “The residents collected signatures, so they have the right to be heard. There is a problem. Everyone recognizes that there is a problem. The issue […] is like in the time of war, because we are now limited in terms of funding. We cannot make capital expenditures. We can patch up leaks, but we cannot make capital expenditures, because there are certain restrictions according to the decision of the Cabinet of Ministers. Therefore, not as many facilities are being built as our residents would like. But we support them.”
MP Melnyk: “Let’s hope that as long as there is a roadmap, as long as there is an estimate and so on… the war will end and then…”.
Rep. Park: “I put the question to the vote. Who is in favor? Two in favor. The motion is carried.”
MPs’ hypocrisy and arbitrariness of officials
Ulyana Pak, a representative of the European Solidarity party, misled residents into believing that they had the right to be heard. Not only that. Residents also have the constitutional right to push back during the elections so that there are no more such hypocritical deputies in the City Hall. Let’s take the Lviv development budget for 2024. Was it really the Shmyhal government that wrote to Sadovyi and the deputies the figures for which local programs and how much to spend on Lviv residents’ taxes? Of course not. In Lviv, the local government, the mayor, and the deputies are self-governing. The deputies allocated most of the almost one billion budget funds to pay off the debts incurred by Andriy Sadovyi. They allocated 342 million for the humanitarian block, 253 million for housing and communal services, and 83 million for urban development. The deputies also took care of the funds for the reconstruction of Mykolaychuk Street, roads in Bilohirshchia and Syhnivka, Zaliznychna Street, Staroznesensk and Yavornytskyi Streets, and Vynna Hora Street in Vynnyky. It’s interesting to know how Vynna Hora Street differs from Lennia Street in terms of priority. The Department of Urban Mobility and Street Infrastructure has been allocated UAH 10 million to install video cameras as part of the Safe City of Lviv program. Is it really necessary to install almost three thousand video cameras in time of war, and leave Lenna Street in the mud, as the lawmakers advise? Or did the Cabinet of Ministers agree to squander budget funds on paving in the central part of Lviv, on Ferenc Liszt, Kalich Gora, Hryhorovych or Drahomanov streets? If Lviv had a truly diligent manager, which street would he repair first, despite wartime – Lenniana or Ferenc Lista?
Also, Lviv residents do not know whether at the end of the 2024 fiscal year, the Cabinet of Ministers, as mentioned by MP Pak, approved Andriy Sadovyi’s initiative to lay still good quality paving slabs for budgetary funds. Visually dubious quality new paving slabs, some kind of oddity that will self-destruct in a few years, are being laid in a hurry in the city center.
These works are being supervised by the same Halyna Hladiak who, while she was the head of the Sykhiv administration, boasted to the whole world, together with the mismanaged Andriy Sadovyi, that they would build a unique stadium for moving sports in Sykhiv, which is unique anywhere else on the planet. However, these populists both defiantly came to the clean Sykhiv field with shovels and left, leaving behind the same clean Sykhiv field. Today, the “builder” Hladiak, in cooperation with the mayor, is engaged in the if not criminal, then definitely questionable repaving of streets. Nothing stops them: neither the difficult economic situation in Ukraine, nor the war, nor considerable human grief, nor conscience, nor even difficult weather conditions. In fact, they persistently transfer funds from the city budget to the private family budget of the Sadovykhs. After all, there are rumors in the city that the clever and corrupt leader has built a paving slab factory near Lviv, using front men. But they are probably lying, because the pious Andriy Sadovyi is definitely not afraid of human punishment as much as he is of God’s punishment. Now Sadovyi and the Town Hall Camarilla, which probably serves private interests, identify small, well-maintained streets in the central part of the city (so that there is less work), draw up a generous estimate for repairs, order paving stones from a probably affiliated company, and then distribute the profits from the city treasury. Who else would be willing to create such a sustainable, as the mayor says, private-profit mechanism? Or as the ancient Romans used to say: corruptus perpetuum mobile( perpetualmotion machine of corruption). Provided that the information about the shadow company is true. In the meantime, what is the parliamentary commission on legality, whose head positions herself as a young model, doing? In a close-knit tandem, MPs Ulyana Pak and Yuriy Melnyk are the worldview followers of the position of the famous Buddhist monkeys: I do not see any alleged abuses by Andriy Sadovyi, I do not hear about any alleged abuses by Andriy Sadovyi, I do not talk about any alleged abuses by Andriy Sadovyi. We can assume that such an openly accommodating position of a deputy can also be heavily rewarded.
