A Small Municipality in the Difficult Transition Period - a Look to the Future

by Antoanetta Gribacheva,

Chairman of the Association for Development of Luki Municipality

The municipality of Luki is small - with population of 5 000 inhabitants and territory of 2 8900 ha. The municipality consists of one town and eight mayoralties situated between 500 and 1 500 meters of altitude amongst beautiful nature.

The following factors hinder the economic and social development of Luki:

• poor infrastructure - roads, telecommunications, etc.;
• total reduction of production capacity and facilities for generating own revenue;
• lack of own funds for strategic planning and investment;
• insufficient number of qualified specialists;
• limited possibilities for professional and social realization of young people;
• absence of sufficient information for the population;

Small inhabited places have, of course, their advantages, such as:

• Relatively well protected environment;
• beautiful nature;
• opportunities to develop environmentally correct agriculture and livestock breeding;
• opportunities to develop tourism;
• cheap labor force;
• absence of competition;
• good results can be achieved even if relatively small amounts of money are invested;
• alienation between people not that strong as elsewhere and willingness to help each other;
• possibility to maintain everyday contact with the inhabitants.

Given the specific characteristics of the economic and social development of our country at that stage best results to improve the situation may be achieved if the administrators from the municipality jointly with the citizens evaluate the positive and negative points, the possibilities and the obstacles for the promotion of their municipality.

The most important is to assess what can be obtained with our own resources:

• surveys can be carried out in order to identify the priorities i.e. the most urgent issues to be solved and which of them can be resolved at a later stage;
• the available financial, staff and information resources can be specified and to study the experience of other similar municipalities;
• the ways and the steps to be undertaken in order to solve each issue must be outlined and special attention should be paid to find financial sources;
• responsibilities can be distributed among the structures of local government, non-profit organizations, business circles and those specialists and citizens who may be of help;
• The auditing system considering local conditions of the municipality should be specified.

If we perform the necessary activities according to these stages and organize the obtained data, we shall have, as a result an action plan.

With the collapse of the centralized planned economy we completely denied and rejected the notion of planning but real life showed us that this is a mistake. The plan, of course, should not be a rigid scheme but it may and must correspond at each moment to the changing conditions keeping the direction of the action. This is the meaning of strategic planning: to keep the strategic objectives, while making an evaluation at each stage of what has been achieved and changing consequently those activities, which do not correspond to the new conditions.

One of the most important premises for the efficiency of the strategy for the development of a specific municipality and of the respective working plans is public support. When preparing such plans it is necessary to know the opinion not only of a wide range of specialists but also of the greatest possible number of citizens. This would provoke understanding and response on behalf of society and it is in this way that best results can be obtained.

Large public support can also be achieved through cooperation with the non-profit organizations. Such organizations can be involved in the process of defining and implementing the activities for sustainable local development through their own specialists and volunteers, the available information , their opportunities for lobbying in front of local authorities.

About a year ago the Association for development of Luki municipality was founded, which unites representatives of different professions and social groups willing to participate with ideas and opinions in activities aimed to support the development and strengthening of the municipality. One of the goals of the association is to work in cooperation with the local government and implement activities through one of the working groups, consisting of members of the association. A representative of the association regularly takes part in the Municipal council s discussions on public issues. Citizens are given the opportunity to get acquainted with the documents prepared for each session and with the respective resolutions adopted by the municipal councilors. The Association issues newsletter and there is a column dedicated to the activities of the Municipal council and municipal administration.

The association, along with the municipal administration, studies the possibilities for working out a comprehensive strategy for the development of the municipality. Untill the end of June the association will conduct an opinion poll concerning the most important issues which the municipality faces at the present day. The results will be further used for specifying the future activities of the association and will be submitted to the municipal council and municipal administration.

In conclusion I would like to add that in the whole process of seeking new possibilities for encouraging the development of a small municipality it is extremely important to pay a special attention to the creation of prospects for young people. The discussions with them are very useful: on the one hand they often share interesting and non-standard ideas, and on the other this is one of the opportunity for their involving and finding their own place in the economic and social life of the municipality.

Since the 1996/1997 school year in the technical high school Christo Botev of the town of Lucki began the first course of a specialized class with four year term of training in economics and management began in the technical high school Hristo Botev of Luki. The teaching is performed on the basis of modules.

In May 1997 the Club of young journalists also began functioning and is going to issue the first local newspaper. We hope that its members will cooperate to render more active participation of the young people on the territory of the municipality.

Invaluable support to the efforts of the municipalities is provided by the organizations which work at national or regional level to encouraging the interaction between local self-government and non-profit organizations. The seminars and the other forms of training organized by the Foundation for Local Government Reform, are another possibility not only to acquire more knowledge but also to establish new contacts with experts and colleagues.

Our daily practice shows that our efforts today determine our tomorrow and therefore despite the difficulties we should devote more time and efforts and raise more funds.

We shall be glad if other small municipalities share their experience in this field with the Association for development of Luki municipality.

Statistics show that approximately 50% of the population of Bulgaria live in settlements places of 5 000 or less inhabitants. This means that the issues of the non-inhabited places concern almost a half of the population in the country.