The Municipality of Haskovo Discovered Management Models
Among Friends in USA
by Georgi Mantarov, Deputy Mayor of Haskovo Municipality
On November 9/17, 1997 a delegation from the Municipality of Haskovo visited the twin counterpart Township of Abington, Pennsylvania, USA within the framework of the Technical Twinning Program/USAID implemented jointly by the Foundation for Local Self-Government Reform and the ICMA.
Technical twinning was initiated at the end of October with the visit to Haskovo of Mr. Tom Conuway and Mat Lahasa, leaders of the Township of Abington which has 68 0000 inhabitants and is located in the State of Pennsylvania. The one week visit to Bulgaria allowed the American administrators to realize the difficulties sometimes insurmountable which the local authorities in Bulgaria have to overcome. Their personal impressions urged them to prepare an extremely pragmatic and busy program for their Bulgarian colleagues visit. They managed to show a model of democratic interaction between the administration and the public which is still unknown in Bulgaria.
Elements of a new phase of the so-called represented democracy have been identified by the delegation of Haskovo Municipality in the work of their colleagues from Abington. The spirit of understanding and response which has become the basis of social relations development, particularly impressed the Mayor Atanas Vassilev and his two deputies during their visit to the US.
It seems that Abington has overgrown the stage of the so-called represented democracy . Formally, it still constitutes the basis on which different structures of the society are being built. The 15 member Board of Commissioners has been elected following the procedures defined by it and it is the Board takes the decisions and manages through its bodies. At the same time a great part of the residents participate directly, without being represented and on their initiative, in various public processes.
Such topics have been discussed not long ago in our country as well and particularly in the documents of the Fatherland Front. Unlike us, the people over the ocean is already aware and are confident that everybody is a part of the society s basis. One reason for that is the completely different principle of building of the public structures in the US. Since the foundation of the Unites States about 200 years ago, every person took direct part in the creation of institutions. Therefore, today nobody expects that somebody else will build a school, a hospital or a fire-station for him.
We saw in Abington 5 voluntarily fire-brigades and there was no one who was permanently appointed in the brigade. The citizens have decided that there was no use of paying an additional tax to support professional firemen and therefore they organized fire-brigades of volunteers. We can only dream of the equipment they use. For example, in the five places, there were car ladders of around 36 m of height (In the former district of Haskovo such a fire-escape ladder is not available, no matter that our buildings are mainly 6 - 8 storied while those in the Philadelphia s suburb are predominantly one story houses.) The existence of 5 brigades allow the firemen to be closer to the potential fire. This give them enough time to go from their working place or their home to the place of the fire and not later than 6 minutes after they have been called to start to the fire place. We have been lucky to see live this process and we got confident of its efficiency.
In Abington we saw how the citizens gathered to decide whether there should be built another stadium in the area of the school. The school that they decided in the past that it should exist and have built by their own, mainly with their funds. Seven years ago following similar procedure the citizens decided to built up a hospital which is now a state-of-the-art hospital center with 2000 personnel.
Every Bulgarian is likely to take such facts as fantastic and his mind cannot take up at once the reality from over the ocean. It is true that it is due to a considerably higher level of personal income It looks to us fantastic also because we were used to a false, demonstrative public pseudo-activity. Within the frame of the former type of society structured from the top downward and based on the power, every attempt of a honorable initiative was doomed to failure.
When I started working for the municipality, I found out that people distrusted the work of the municipal services and this was due to the failure of fulfilling commitments and planned tasks. It is very bad not to fulfill the plan! , said Mat Lahasa when discussing the interaction procedures between Haskovo and Abington. The type of the interaction techniques agreed during our visit to US was based on his words.
We decided that in the first place it would be particularly efficient for our work in Haskovo to apply our colleagues experience in two directions: to encourage citizens participation through interaction with the structures of the local authorities and to start at the same time developing of a strategy for economical promotion of the municipality.
The real benefits for the Bulgarian cities from the fulfillment of Technical Twinning Program are already specific. During our visit a potential risk of the program implementation was identified. It is absurd but this risk is even higher and is due to our American partners willingness to do their best. They are already convinced in the positive results which would be obtained in applying the models selected by them. It took us long to persuade them that in the contemporary society some of the mechanisms would not simply work while copying directly others could have a reversal effect.
We realized in advance the difficulties which may arise from the application of models taken from the experience of our American colleagues and this allowed us to define on time more pragmatic objectives, relatively easy to be achieved. During our visit we could see the benefits of the direct citizens participation in the sittings of the municipal council. Those benefits are of more peculiar type. They refer not only to the direct result from citizens participation in the resolving of a specific issue. We think that the feeling of being a part of a process which is necessarily caused by the commitment of everybody is much more important.
There is another factor in Bulgaria which is of great importance: people s way of reasoning which has been formed for years to wait for the municipality or another institution to resolve the respective problem. Overcoming the internal resistance of each citizen against his direct participation in the decision making procedures at local level is a very important process without which it would be unrealistic to expect any changes to take place. Our American partners experience in this field is very interesting. The approach which they have chosen to encourage citizens activity by establishing 18 voluntary associations which are effective today is very useful and instructive for us.
The visit of Haskovo s delegation to the US and the procedures for the implementation of technical twinning which have been agreed upon make us confident that a significant part of positive ideas, fulfilled there may be transferred and successfully applied in the Bulgarian reality of the present day.
Bulgarian administrators in the municipality of Abington, Pennsylvania, USA, got acquainted with mechanisms of interaction between the administration and the public which may be useful to them when encouraging citizens activity.
- The mayor of the Haskovo Municipality talks to Barbara Ferara, Chairman of the Board of Commissioners, and Tom Konuway, City Manager of Abington. His office is decorated with a map of Bulgaria.
- A hearty welcome of the guests from Bulgaria.
- TV interview with the Mayor of Haskovo, broadcasted live from the streets of Keswick Village, Abington.
- The hosts are proud with reason with the conditions they have created for the students from the local high school.