In Odesa, the process of transferring bomb shelters from the state to the city has been slowed down by land issues

Members of the Commission on Municipal Property, Economic, Investment, State Regulatory Policy and Entrepreneurship of the Odesa City Council decided to organize a joint meeting of representatives of the city council and the regional office of the State Property Fund to discuss the transfer of bomb shelters located in the city to municipal ownership.

According to Oleksandr Akhmerov, director of the municipal property department, who spoke at the commission's meeting on June 17, the city council was given ownership of 27 bomb shelters and has not made any decisions on this since.

"After that, the work was completely stalled. Currently, there are 13 bomb shelters in operation, but there is no feedback from the State Property Fund and we no longer know what to do," the official complained.

He also noted that one of the problematic shelters is the one located on the territory of Krayan.

"Krayan is very important for us, because there are many visitors there, city council departments work there and they need shelter, and there have already been arrivals there," said Oleksandr Slavskyi, chairman of the commission and MP.

Instead, a representative of the Regional Office of the State Property Fund of Ukraine, who was invited to the meeting, explained that according to the law, free-standing bomb shelters can be transferred to municipal ownership only if there are documents for the land plot directly on which the bomb shelters are located.

"Until 2024, the Cabinet of Ministers gave its consent, although efforts were needed, but after 2024, the Ministry of Finance insisted that the transfer should be done in accordance with the law, i.e. with land plots, and in most cases, land plots under the bomb shelters are not formalized in any way," explained the representative of the Regional Office of the SPFU.

He noted that the State Property Fund of Ukraine should deal with the documentation issues, but since the beginning of the land crisis, the SPFU's main priority has been to acquire funds to fill the budget, and registration of land plots under bomb shelters is not a priority for the Fund.

The commission members noted that the problem could be solved by allocating subsidies to the State Property Fund for land registration in order to transfer it to municipal ownership, but the mechanism for such a solution is currently unknown. The average cost of land registration for bomb shelters is 30 thousand hryvnias. Currently, out of the 13 bomb shelters that are currently undergoing the transfer procedure, the city council can transfer those that are considered built-in according to the documents, and according to the representative of the Fund, there are eight or nine of them.

Another problem is resolving the issue of balance holders, which are private organizations. Some of them are currently out of business or have been liquidated. The SPFU can theoretically transfer these bomb shelters for storage to the city council.

According to Oleksandr Slavsky, if the issue is not resolved before the city council session scheduled for August, he will personally consider it criminal negligence and will appeal to law enforcement.

Кирило Бойко