Meeting of Lutsk City Mayor Mykola Romaniuk with the representatives of “June 4 Society”
There were honorable guests participating in the meeting, among them: Mayor Mykola Romaniuk, City Council Secretary Sergii Gryhorenko, Head of International Cooperation and Project Activities Department Vira Kudriavtseva, Secretary of “June 4 Society” Maja Viniarska-Chajkovska, expert on territorial defense and security Andzhei Broda.
During the meeting there was a brief overview of the mission and activities of the Society, discussion the possibility of Lutsk City Council executive bodies employees to participate in exchange programs.
Mykola Romaniuk informed guests about the first steps towards authorities decentralization in Ukraine. He also focused on changes to taxation. According to his words, it will allow to increase the budget of Lutsk twice during this year, which is 109 million UAH. He described state subventions for education and health care. However, there are many programs that cannot be implemented without local financial support. These are: work with gifted children, art schools activities, appropriate children’s nutrition in educational institutions of the city, the purchase of medical equipment and so on. The provision of health services may be improved by introduction of health insurance. A particular preparation to that is the creation of a sickness fund. It was noted that a significant progress in the quality of administrative services is Center for Providing Administrative Services. Besides, the participants discussed international cooperation. The mayor told guests that Lutsk has partner cities in nine countries of the world. One more important point for discussion was the current relationship between residents of Ukrainian - Polish borderland.
In conclusion, Mykola Romaniuk said that the Polish experience in city management deserves much attention. He stressed that the concept of local government reform in Ukraine is mainly based on the Polish approach. “The Polish way is considered to be successful among European Union countries, the representatives of the Association of Local Governments, who were at the II International Forum, stated that the Polish experience absorbed the best practices in Europe for the last 50 years. It is great, that now we have the opportunity to send our employees for traineeships in Polish local governments, in order to see the work of local government in Poland on practice.”
Note: “June 4 Society” was founded by the veterans of the Polish trade union movement “Solidarity”. The Society operates over a year and is interested in supporting Ukraine by organizing study visits. Society launches a programme called “New Seed”, which allows participants to undergo training in local governments in Poland. Thanks to this program, 4 employees of Lutsk City Council (representing the fields of city’s promotion, municipal police, involving EU funds and informatization) on September 29 - October 6, 2014 were trained in the administration of Grodzhisk Mazovietski Office. Besides studying the work of Polish colleagues, employees of the City Council also visited institutions and new enterprises in Grodzhisk Mazovyetski, built under the projects co-financed from EU funds.