Sofia’s cultural calendar for 2024, or at least part of it, may be blocked by the Sofia Municipal Council. The document submitted by the deputy mayor for education and culture, Yana Genova, did not receive support from the councilors from the relevant committee in the municipal council due to the abstentions from GERB and BSP plus independents.
The final decision will be taken on Thursday by the Metropolitan Municipal Council. The deputy mayor for culture Yana Genova commented that the vote would fail a huge number of traditionally held cultural events.
Some of them have already passed, and the approval of the document is a step towards the organizers receiving funds from the municipality for them.
A controversial festival
First, the report with the calendar of cultural events that are supported financially or logistically by the Metropolitan Municipality was discussed by the finance committee. There, on the proposal of GERB, it was decided to support only part of the report – the one that describes specific larger projects that receive financial assistance from the municipality. Councilors decided not to give their consent to the part of the report that should allocate funding to summer events and those organized by district administrations. The reason was that there was no list of the specific initiatives that would be supported.
The bone of contention turned out to be the Sofia Summer festival, which is organized by the Artvent company in South Park. It lasts all summer, and this year the events are supposed to start from July 18. From the discussion in the finance committee, it turned out that the festival should only receive logistical, but not financial, support from the municipality. The problem, according to councilor Vanya Tagareva from GERB, is that there is a negative opinion against this event from one of the committees of the municipal council. The reason – over 700 signatures from people living in the area, who insist that the festival not be held there because of the noise.
Vanya Tagareva added that due to the lack of concrete projects in the part with summer events and such, the regions are given a blank check for BGN 500,000 (which is the total amount for the two feathers). According to her, the administration should have provided a complete list of supported events.
Jana Genova explained that the very rules for determining the cultural program, voted two months ago by the municipal council, do not require the provision of specific projects under these two pillars, as they are approved by the mayor, and are often current and not planned for months previously.
Discussion decision
On the basis of the opinion of the finance committee, the chairman of the committee on culture, Miroslav Boršos from GERB, said that he would abstain on the report on the cultural calendar. This was also done by four other people from the commission, which resulted in the report not being accepted. According to Borsosh, the decision of the financial committee to vote only the projects listed by name is debatable, but it was logical to see the specific projects in the sections for summer events and those of the regions.
He added that he abstained because among the big projects there were those that were dropped, and the approved sums were not enough.
Veselin Kalanovski from the group of “Continuing the change-Democratic Bulgaria”/”Save Sofia” answered him that in fact the summer program is available and he received it from the administration. According to him, the municipal councilors cannot have creative claims given that the proposals for events are evaluated by an expert committee. In addition, the lists of summer events and those by area have never before been considered and approved by the municipal council.
“Another sabotage attempt”
“The arbitrariness of this act can only be explained as another attempt to sabotage the city administration from doing its job and following procedures. Or with bias towards certain event organizers. The arbitrariness of this act offends not only the independent assessors in the Calendar and the efforts of colleagues from the “Culture” directorate; it offends all partner organizations, be they non-profit, state, guild or private”Deputy Mayor Jana Genova wrote on her Facebook profile.
According to her, the realization of 140 cultural events in the city is threatened.
“Organizing an event takes a lot of time, and the uncertainty about the future of the Cultural Calendar casts doubt on their implementation. Elementary respect for this work and for the people of culture required the decision-makers to clamp down on their petty power games.”says Gigova.
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