Dorin Chirtoaca: In strained circumstances and pressured by the central administration, the municipality has done the best it could during one year

One year after being elected as Chisinau's mayor, Dorin Chirtoaca has presented his report on the attainments managed by the City Hall, and on the activities to be carried out till the end of his mandate. He presented the report in the Stefan cel Mare Public Garden on Wednesday, Info-Prim Neo reports. “The first year has been marked by the need to adjust the City Hall's and the municipal services' activities, to re-enter legality, first in terms of running the public money,” Dorin Chirtoaca stated. According to him, because of gathering enormous arrears during the previous years, especially debts to heat supplier SA Termocom, the municipal activities has been blocked. “Many more goals could have been reached, unless we had a budget deficit of over 500 million lei,” Chirtoaca underlined. Even under these circumstances, he says, the local administration has managed to overcome the difficult situations and to solve the municipality's problems. The main attained objectives are related to paying off debts and subsidies worth about 500 million lei. Special stress has been attached to cleanliness. Illegal garbage dumps have been liquidated. The streets and house courts are better cleaned, as well as the green areas. The mayor says savings in the budget have been made, while the volume of the works done has increased. Chirtoaca says important steps have been made in holding public auctions to procure goods, services and works. They continued to rehabilitate the infrastructure of the housing sector. According to Chisinau's mayor, the major issue in the municipality – the waste water treating plant – could have been partially solved, if the budget of the local administration had been blocked. The bad quality of roads and the old public transport remain stringent problems. Also the vagrant dogs remain an unresolved problem. He has pleaded to solve the issue humanely. “There are two locations where dog asylums are to be built, in Ciorescu and Bacioi. A number of NGOs and German partners plan to sterilize the dogs.” According to Dorin Chirtoaca, the municipality assumes its responsibility for the increase of the prices of servicing the dwelling blocks and of heating and running water. “This has not happened for tens of years. The former administrations did not raise the tariffs fearing the people's dissatisfaction. We cannot go on like this, because we need to operate those rises, if we want to have quality services,” the mayor said. His priorities for 2008-2009 are related to the good functioning of the waste water cleaning plant, to ending the the reconstruction of Valea Morilor park through a public-private partnership, to finalizing the project to build the waste processing plant, to building dwellings for budget earners, to rehabilitating the transport network,to attracting private investments, to promoting the direct cooperation with the EU and with the other local administrations from Moldova to access European funds.