Odesa City Council session postponed for two weeks

Acting Odesa Mayor Igor Koval has ordered to postpone the date of the Odesa City Council session, which is supposed to be the first of the year.

As stated in the order published by the press service of Odesa City Hall, the deputies will now convene on February 11 instead of January 28, as previously planned.

The currently published tentative agenda includes 115 draft decisions, most of which relate to land relations. However, the agenda currently includes a block of issues on taxes and fees that has not yet been filled with draft decisions, so it is possible that there will be more.

Intent will traditionally broadcast the meeting online. Meanwhile, we already know at least one issue that may cause discussions in the session hall: the fact that the deputies did not include the territory of the Summer Theater in the project for the maintenance and reconstruction of the City Garden, which was approved by the executive committee of the Odesa City Council on January 18.

Despite the fact that the Summer Theater is an integral part of it. Kvasnytska recalled that the City Garden has the status of a monument of landscape art, and the relevant accounting documentation was defended by the community back in 2017 and approved by the expert commission at the Ministry of Culture. According to these documents, the territory of the Summer Theater is part of the monument, and the development of projects for only certain areas contradicts the monument protection legislation.

The scandal surrounding the Summer Theater arose after a decision by the Odesa City Council in September 2016. Back then, during the tenth session, the deputies approved the allocation of a land plot on the territory of the Summer Theater in the City Garden.

In June 2017, the developer received a declaration for the construction of an administrative building with retail and recreational facilities. Subsequently, Odesa activists published a document that showed that 109 trees were to be cut down on the territory of the Summer Theater. These plans caused outrage among the townspeople, and on November 18, Odesa residents held a mass protest against the development of the historic part of the City Garden.

Кирило Бойко