One of the items on the agenda of the January City Council session was a vote on a draft resolution concerning the local spatial development plan. Marta Gęsikowska from the Municipal Property and Spatial Planning Department spoke and said that the Municipal Communal Services Establishment had requested the correction of incorrect provisions in the local plan. The issue concerned an area that is marked as a road on maps but in fact belongs to the cemetery.

Councillor Dariusz Mucha of the Romanowe Forum then asked whether “under the applicable law, this is a road located outside the cemetery.” The official nodded. The Deputy Mayor of Bolesławiec tried to correct her, but was unable to do so. Mucha asked Council Chairman Jarosław Kowalski to be kind enough to ask the mayor not to interrupt him. He added: “Under the applicable local law, this plot is currently a road and is outside the cemetery. So what is MZGK requesting?”

When Marta Gęsikowska answered that question, Councillor Mucha asked another: when was it discovered that there was an error in the plan? The official replied that it was in January 2017. Another councillor from Roman’s group, Wojciech Kasprzyk, then joined the discussion. He said that Councillor Mucha was staging media spectacles. “Do you want to run for mayor?” Kasprzyk asked. He stressed that Dariusz Mucha had exceeded the statutory time limit for asking questions. Jarosław Kowalski agreed with Councillor Kasprzyk and, despite Mucha’s protests, ordered a 10-minute break. As Councillor Mucha left the Council Chamber, he told people sitting in the gallery that 38 people had been buried on the road and that the council wanted to cover it all up by taking away his right to speak.

After the break, the story continued. Iwona Mandżuk-Dudek explained that when the local plan was adopted in 2001, the plot in question was part of the cemetery. Two years later, several plots, including the one mentioned by Mucha, were handed over to MZGK for administration. “This was an obvious planning error. The plot was excluded from the cemetery,” Mandżuk-Dudek explained. “We want to correct this error. This is cemetery land. It is a road only on paper.”

Head of the Municipal Property and Spatial Planning Department Jan Kisiliczyk said: “The whole problem arose because there was no flow of information between the municipal services department and the property department; some information got out of sync. The burials carried out on plot 92, according to MZGK’s knowledge, took place within the cemetery grounds.”

Councillor Mucha then changed his tone somewhat:

He then accused Kowalski of silencing him and protecting the interests of “his own chairman and his own.” The Council chairman once again stressed that all committees had issued positive opinions on the draft resolution in question, and had done so almost unanimously.

The councillors adopted the resolution with 18 votes in favour. Dariusz Mucha voted against it, while Łukasz Molak abstained.