During Tuesday’s City Council session, Bogusław Nowak, an independent councillor, submitted an interpellation concerning the mayor’s reports on important actions taken between sessions. “I would like them to be presented to the Council electronically and in writing one day before the planned session, so that councillors could familiarise themselves with them,” Nowak said. “If the mayor posted the reports in the Public Information Bulletin a day earlier, he would save the Council and people watching the proceedings—here or online—hours of monotonous reading of a text that appears on the BIP website immediately after the session anyway. Let us respect our time and the mayor’s voice.”
The councillor added that he assumed “the mayor does not prepare the report hastily just before the session and that it is ready earlier.”
“Looking at some materials left untouched during the session—it is clearly visible that they have not even been opened—I fear that my reports would not be read either,” the mayor of Bolesławiec Piotr Roman remarked sarcastically. “However, if you decide that I should not submit reports, I will not submit them. The fact is that trends in Poland are exactly the opposite. In Wrocław, councillors even demand that Mayor Rafał Dutkiewicz present a lengthy report on his actions at every session.”
“By reading the reports, I inform not only the councillors, but also the people sitting in this room and the media. Much of this information later reaches the residents of our city,” Roman continued. “It also happens that my reports contain news from the last few hours.”
Piotr Roman thanked Nowak for the “appeal concerning respect for the mayor’s voice.” “I apologise for speaking monotonously. I am not an actor; I do not treat the lectern as a stage. I will try to vary my articulation and tone so as to satisfy the councillor,” the mayor said ironically.
“If councillors could familiarise themselves with the report the day before the proceedings, they would have a moment to consider any questions,” Nowak explained. “After 40 minutes of your speech, I no longer remember what you said 15 minutes ago. You stretch these reports out indefinitely.”
“I am now answering your tenth interpellation, and I no longer remember what I said in response to the first one,” Roman retorted. But he immediately added that some councillors, after hearing the report, withdraw their interpellations (this was the case, for example, with Cezariusz Rudyk, a Civic Platform councillor, who during Tuesday’s session abandoned plans to submit interpellations concerning the Eastern Railway Station area). “I may stop submitting reports, but that will not shorten the session,” the mayor stressed.
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(information ii)