When there is a shortage of staff at the mayor’s office to cope with important project, the cooperation with the NGO sector is a solution. This is one of the efficient methods that produced results in Sireț village of Strășeni district. In a public debate staged by IPN, the mayor of the village Leonid Boaghi said that when you really want to attract projects to a locality, you must look for all the possible ways and should not bank on the public budget only.

“It is a very good solution. I permanently tell all our mates from the local public administration that when you don’t have partners, you must grow them. This perfectly matches our discussion. On the other hand, I would not say that this is an alternative solution as such an approach implies both advantages and disadvantages. The associations have a rectilinear development course and when the association has activities, it develops and implements these, but there are periods when there are no activities and the association becomes inactive. In this case, it does not advance on the path and loses that institutional moiety and those experienced persons. That’s why the associations should be kept near so as to implement projects and to advance in the very long run,” stated Leonid Boaghi.

The mayor of Sireți noted that in parallel with nice cooperation between the mayor’s office and the NGO sector, investments should be mandatorily made in the local public institutions so as to improve skills. This way, the relations between the mayor, the local council and the employees of the mayor’s office will be strengthened for the locality’s benefit. “If we develop or seek support from partners, we should grow them in the long run, but should also have the capacity to extend the team at the mayor’s office as this is actually institutional memory and the team that already has experience from project to project can develop further,” stated l Leonid Boaghi.

According to him, the involvement of local decision makers in the implementation of projects and the establishment of a long-term relationship can lead to joint results at the local level. This means greater financial, administrative and intellectual capacity to win and successfully implement projects.

“I want to say that we during the last tenure implemented tens of projects with different funds. We had local initiatives implemented with local funds and with the support of the mayor’s office. We implemented projects or initiatives to the value of over 5 million lei. We also implemented projects with the support of the development partners, totaling 40-50 million lei. We had projects we developed and implemented with the support of state programs or projects to the value of about 30 million lei,” related Leonid Boaghi.

He concluded that the level of local self-government increased in Moldova due to the policies pursued by the central authorities and also to the fact that the LPAs realized that they must be responsible for the community and must improve the living conditions, especially now that the possibilities are much greater.

The public debate entitled “Local elected officials after elections: Cooperation and competition for public interest” was staged by IPN News Agency in the framework of the project “Stimulation of discussion in the mass media about traditional particularities of local elections and the need for Europeanization” which is supported by Soros Foundation Moldova.