Repairs Not “for Insiders”: Senkevych Proposes Opening Up the Roadwork Queue in Mykolaiv

The mayor of Mykolaiv, Oleksandr Sienkevych, proposed creating a public queue for repairs to internal neighborhood roads and roads in the private sector. At a staff meeting on November 9, he explained that residents should be able to check which sites need repairs and in what order repair crews will reach them.

“Some people genuinely get the impression that we repair things for certain people, for our own, but not for everyone else. This issue needs to be made public,” said Oleksandr Sienkevych.

The mayor cited the register of land plots for ATO participants as an example of such a queue. He said the list was made publicly available in 2016.

“You could look it up: where you stood, who had received a plot before you, and whether anyone after you had received one. In other words, the register was only added to at the bottom and the queue itself never changed. Everything was clear: no one was trying to cheat anyone, and there were no insiders or outsiders. I believe we need to do the same here,” explained Oleksandr Sienkevych.

At the same time, fair criteria for road repairs still need to be established. The mayor compared how many households might use the same area of roadway — 500 square meters:

• between apartment buildings — around 400 households;
• in the private sector — only ten households.

“From a practical standpoint, it makes sense to provide for the 200 or 400 households living in an apartment building, right? But that means the people living in the private sector will never get their turn. That’s unfair,” noted Oleksandr Sienkevych.

The mayor asked the heads of district administrations to prepare their own proposals on how to compile and publish the list. It should cover both routine and major repairs.

“So that we make this public, so people can see where they are in the queue and when they can expect to get that roadway repaired,” said Oleksandr Sienkevych.

The work of the 15-88 contact center and the closure of road-repair requests were also discussed. The mayor stressed that such requests must remain under review until the work is completed.

“Some people already consider the response ‘there is no funding’ to mean that the request has been completed. No, we will not close these cases. We will close them when we lay the asphalt,” said Oleksandr Sienkevych.

Before the budget is drawn up, the mayor proposed compiling residents’ accumulated requests and finding out:

• how many roads and driveways need repairs;
• for which sites the design documentation is already ready;
• how much funding is needed to address residents’ requests.

We also wrote earlier:

• Potholes celebrating an anniversary! The road in Korabelnyi has been promised a better future for 25 years
• Nearly 9 million for driveway repairs: Korabelnyi District Administration is looking for road crews
• Nearly 12 million to be spent on road and sidewalk repairs in Korabelnyi District: full list of addresses
• The administration has logged the “bumps and potholes,” but what happens next?!
• “They’re just dragging their feet, and there’s no oversight,” Sienkevych says of his own underperforming subordinates who ignore residents’ complaints