A garage owner on Staroszkolna Street contacted our editorial office (this concerns the garages in front of the former Metalplast), representing a group of people who own property there.
According to our Reader, the matter of laying a hard surface there, installing stormwater drainage inlets and lighting has been dragging on for seven years. The first letter to the mayor dates from 21 February 2008 and was signed by 94 people who owned garages on Staroszkolna. In their reply, officials informed the owners that there was no money for this in the budget. The garage owners appealed and wrote several letters, and councillor Irena Dul raised the issue in an interpellation.
Correspondence between the owners and officials continued from 2008 to 2014. The City Hall proposed that people co-finance the construction of the road. There were also letters mentioning plans to build a hard-surface road to the garages after the District Office had renovated Staroszkolna. Deputy Mayor Iwona Mandżur promised at the end of 2012 that the project would be considered while preparing the city budget for 2013.
But it was not until late August and September 2014 that MZGK carried out the work. This included excavating the entire road to a depth of 50–60 cm (an area of 1,740 sq m), removing excess soil and rubble (348 sq m), laying a 10-cm drainage layer (580 sq m) and a 20-cm sub-base (an area of 1,160 sq m). The cost of the work was PLN 60,658.97.
“Those concerned were informed during the meeting that this was a temporary solution,” explains spokesperson Agnieszka Gergont. “After the recent heavy rainfall, in order to reduce the inconvenience associated with access to the garages, additional material was ordered to be laid and the access road on Staroszkolna Street levelled. The City Hall is also currently considering other technological options for reinforcing the access road. I would like to remind you that the city’s road-building practice assumes that road investments providing both access and lighting to housing estates that have already been developed and are occupied by a larger number of residents are planned first,” the spokesperson adds.
In our Reader’s opinion, the City Hall’s expenditure of PLN 60,000 was wasteful; he claims that the work carried out by MZGK did not improve access to the garages. The Reader suggests a solution similar to the one near Podgórna Street, which also provides access to garages. He is also very angry about the long time it took to resolve this important matter, which, as he calculated, affects more than 200 residents of Bolesławiec.
We are publishing the Reader’s supplementary email.
Following our telephone conversation of 20 April 2015, after the article entitled “PLN 60,000 Thrown Down the Drain from Tax Money” appeared on the Istotne.pl website, I would like to inform you that not all the important facts contained in the written materials I provided for your use, as well as in our telephone and personal conversations concerning an objective presentation of the activities of the Bolesławiec City Hall, including the city’s First Deputy Mayor, Ms Iwona Mandżuk, were included in the published online article.
Above all, spokesperson Agnieszka Gergont cannot say that the solution which cost PLN 60,000 is a temporary solution. It must be called what it is: “a squandering of public money,” something we garage owners warned about during meetings with the First Deputy Mayor on the garage premises and several times during meetings in her office at the City Hall.
You simply cannot spend so much money on a trial basis when it was known that this expenditure would go straight down the drain. When I asked the First Deputy Mayor why she did not want to carry out a permanent repair of the road—I suggested looking at how the road to the garages behind Podgórna Street had been built—I immediately received the answer: “No, because no.” I regarded that answer, as I emphasized to you, Editor, as the authorities’ disregard for approximately 250 garage owners from Staroszkolna Street.
Moreover, you did not mention, Editor, that the condition of the road to the garages and the need for its permanent renovation, including drainage and lighting, were discussed at a meeting and inspection of the garage area by the then Infrastructure Committee of the City Council in 2008. The Committee formulated specific recommendations for the executive authority, namely the Mayor. All of this is contained in the materials in your possession. In addition, toward the end of one year—I do not currently remember which one because I do not have the materials with me; they are in your possession, Editor—I asked that this be added in detail, as there was correspondence with the City Hall—the city budget had PLN 2 million saved for road repairs in the city. The City Hall’s response was that there was no money in the budget. On the one hand, there was money saved in the budget, but there was none for us. Complete paranoia.
Furthermore, I emphasized in our conversation that there appeared to be a claim against the contractor who repaired the road in September 2014 (just before the local elections!!!), since three months after the repair work ended, the road to the garages was in worse condition than before it began. You write nothing about this. The warranty issue is also very important here and should not be forgotten. At present, the garage owners are trying to cope by filling the ruts and potholes themselves with soil from the verges of this disastrous road so they can get through somehow. The tragic nature of the situation is demonstrated by the fact that even the ramp over the kerb from Staroszkolna Street toward the garages—and vice versa—is chipped and threatens to damage car bodies.