1. The question I asked during the County Council session described in the article concerned methods of removing snow or ice from roads in Austria. I noticed that, despite the low temperatures {alpine region}, the roads there are maintained to a high standard without using sand or a sand-and-salt mixture. Their roads, including those in lower categories, are black. I did not ask about road-maintenance standards in Bolesławiec County, because I am familiar with them. The editorial office completely and misleadingly omitted the essence of my question, entirely leaving out the words I spoke and distorting their meaning, presenting the situation in a way intended to humiliate me in the eyes of readers. I would also like to add here that at consistently low temperatures, below 7 degrees C, calcium chloride—not salt and brine—is used. The fact that the manager I asked referred to road-maintenance standards in Poland for county roads is a separate matter. Out of politeness, I did not pursue the subject.
2. The article also stated that I was Bolesławiec County Head from 2014 to autumn 2018, which is obviously untrue. In reality, I held this position from autumn 2016 to autumn 2018—that is, for only two years.
3. It is untrue that, during the farewell for the then head of the County Roads Authority, Mr Roman Palczewski, who was retiring, in the first half of my term in office, I allegedly demonstrated my unfamiliarity with county-road maintenance standards by giving him a photograph of a “pothole” in the road. It is impossible to reach such a conclusion, particularly based on the clear-to-everyone (except the editor of Istotne.pl) nature of the gift, which expressed sympathy for the departing man and demonstrated the sense of humour of both the giver and the recipient. In addition, the article’s author provided false information because the pothole shown in the photograph was photographed on a municipal road, not a county road as stated in the text.
It is impossible to understand the lack of reliability in the text in question. Without disputing the author’s statement—which he is entitled to make—I would nevertheless point out that calling the unrealised coalition in the County between Platforma Samorządowa and the local Law and Justice party, PSL and Impuls Powiatu an “exotic coalition” is an opinion and, in addition, not a particularly accurate one, given the exotic nature of the coalition formed by Bezpartyjni Samorządowcy, Law and Justice, and the Democratic Left Alliance.
Karol Stasik