Ariel Fecyk: “Winter is approaching; I doubt any of us likes this season, and I certainly do not. I wrote this interpellation based on my own experience. Unfortunately—and this is not just a problem in Bolesławiec, but in most cities—the way various routes, pavements and pedestrian crossings are maintained is not uniform. Sometimes, along a property administered by different managers, the same pavement is cleared of snow in completely different ways. I can travel 50% of the route in my wheelchair, but I cannot manage the other half.”
He asked: “Is it possible—and is there a will—to create guidelines for maintaining the city in such a way that everyone—a mother with a child, me in a wheelchair, elegantly dressed women wearing high heels—could use the pavements equally?”
The Platforma Samorządowa councillor stressed that such guidelines would provide grounds for enforcing snow removal.
Piotr Roman: “I agree with the councillor that the rules should be simple and clear. There are also regulations specifying the obligations of property owners whose properties adjoin a pavement, including the quality of snow removal. There is always someone responsible. The most serious problem concerns situations where roads intersect. Because he is right: residents are not interested in who manages a particular road; the mayor receives all the criticism anyway. At street junctions, tenders are most often won by different companies. Someone might say, quite reasonably, that there should be one contractor responsible for snow removal. However, our MZGK could not enter the tender organised by the District Roads Authority because it did not meet the conditions set by the Authority or the District. Perhaps this year it will be different.”
“As for the guidelines,” the mayor continued, “we can meet with the district governor. But we spend more on this than the District does, because we expect higher standards and do not want a repeat of the situations that occurred last winter.”
He stressed: “The situation is different in the case of national roads, which are the responsibility of the General Directorate for National Roads and Motorways. They clear National Road No. 94 here—the bypass and II Armii Wojska Polskiego Street. The results also vary, and we are not always satisfied with the snow removal. Can this problem be solved? Of course. The solution would be to make Bolesławiec a city with county rights. Before 1998, before the county reform, the Municipality of Bolesławiec managed almost all the roads in the city. Another factor was that the voivodeship roads were placed under the District’s management. Some time ago, we approached the marshal—and we will do so again—to say that we would like to take over management of the voivodeship roads. The amount the District receives to maintain these roads would, in our view, enable us to maintain them to the standards we expect.”
P. Roman noted that Bolesławiec City did not agree to take over the district roads because the amount proposed by the District to the Municipality of Bolesławiec was too low—as he said, it was PLN 500 per kilometre per month. “It is difficult to maintain a road to the proper standard for that amount,” the mayor concluded.
He added: “I can approach the district governor, but I am concerned that, because the District does not have that kind of money, it will not be possible to maintain the roads to the proper standard.”
The mayor also announced that the Municipal Police would step up its activities. “We will do what is required of us and we will intervene,” he assured.
We will return to this topic.