We wrote about the matter in the article Councillors Have Saddled the City with Another PLN 10.5 Million in Debt One of the items on the agenda of the April session of the Bolesławiec City Council was a vote on a draft resolution “on the issuance of municipal bonds and setting out the principles for their sale, purchase and redemption”. Before the vote, however, Mayor Piotr Roman spent about 30 minutes trying to convince the councillors that adopting the resolution was worthwhile. “Housing needs are absolutely fundamental in the hierarchy of needs affecting residents, particularly people starting families,” he stressed. “In the case of Bolesławiec, the housing shortage is still significant. We counted on developers building apartments here, but it is clear that even those who have built them are having problems selling them. In recent years, the City of Bolesławiec has built, among other things, social housing. Our largest investment, ISPA, led to the provision of infrastructure for a large number of plots. The activities of the Social Housing Association, which was established to construct buildings, were a separate matter. But in the case of the TBS, the possibility of operating as before has practically come to an end, because the PO and PSL government abolished the housing fund, and today everything is based on commercial loans.”
“Today we can make a decision on another economic stimulus: the construction of 120 apartments,” the mayor continued. “Bolesławiec is one of several hundred cities in Poland that have experienced an exodus of residents to the outskirts. Four thousand people have disappeared from Bolesławiec. What is more, the best taxpayers are leaving. A city that had 44,000 residents now has fewer than 40,000. We must halt this trend, because it affects tax revenues. It is estimated that, on average, one resident pays about PLN 3,000 in tax, so if 4,000 residents of Bolesławiec now live outside Bolesławiec, PLN 12 million has disappeared from the city budget. And it was the wealthiest who moved away.”
The Council adopted the resolution with 13 votes in favour. The city hall will issue 10,500 bonds for a total of PLN 10.5 million. The bond issue is intended to finance the planned 2012 budget deficit connected with the implementation of investment tasks related to housing.
On 9 August, the mayor issued an order “on selecting the most advantageous offer for the Agent for the Issuance of Municipal Bonds of the Municipality of Bolesławiec”. The offers were analysed by a committee consisting of: Mirosława Mitek, Małgorzata Gawlik and Adrian Kaczmarek.
It is already known that Powszechna Kasa Oszczędności Bank Polski SA will handle the bond issue. Is this a good choice? We invite you to discuss it.
(information: Bolesławiec City Hall/ii)