“We have adopted the 'Prudential Practice Program' – this is a big step towards healing the finances of our city,” announced the mayor of Zabrze, Agnieszka Rupniewska, on social media on Friday, November 15. Details of the program were presented a few days earlier during a press conference. “Its effect will be that for the first time in seven years, Zabrze will enter the new year without any obligations from previous years,” she added.
Zabrze has huge debts. The city wants to take a loan from the Ministry of Finance
During Friday's extraordinary session of the City Council, councilors also voted on a draft resolution regarding the use of a financial instrument granted by Ministry of Finance. Zabrze wants to take out a loan of PLN 373 million. The instrument is intended for local governments that find themselves in a difficult financial situation. “Thanks to it, we will avoid the need to issue bonds next year, we will pay arrears for previous years, in particular contributions to GZM for public transport, we will cover current expenses of units, including education expenses, arrears due to failure to provide social housing will also be settled,” explained Agnieszka Rupniewska .
The “Prudential Practice Program” consists of two parts – a diagnosis of Zabrze's problems and a prescription for how to deal with them. – One of the problems generated by our predecessors is that until now, the city actually relied on its residents. How? By not paying arrears to housing communities, not paying outstanding contributions to ZUS or failure to pay the Upper Silesian-Zagłębie Metropolis for public transport. These are just some of the problems that our city had to face – said Agnieszka Rupniewska on Wednesday, November 13.
Zabrze's huge debt. Almost PLN 900 million. “An additional deficit was hidden in the budget”
Łukasz Urbańczyk, secretary of the city of Zabrze, pointed to the debt to GZM and communities (approximately PLN 70 million in total) and to SRK for apartments municipal (PLN 8.8 million). – Some of the city's tasks that were not covered in the budget were transferred to companies, thus generating losses and almost leading to bankruptcy of one of the companies. The total financial result of the city's companies for 2023 alone is minus PLN 80 million, and the forecast liabilities are a PLN 224 million loss on these companies – said Łukasz Urbańczyk.
He added that a notification has been submitted to the prosecutor's office regarding the MOSiR company, and another one will concern the ZPEC Zabrze company. – At the same time, the city's debt was growing and growing loansloans, bonds, liabilities amounted to PLN 883 million, and debt servicing expenses amounted to PLN 59 million – calculated the secretary of the city of Zabrze. Another PLN 52 million is the cost of sureties, and PLN 262 million is the mortgage on land in the area of the so-called new city.
– The irregularities we encountered have been corrected over the last six months. Each saving measure allowed for partial corrections of these irregularities, but their scale was so huge that to this day current revenues are overstated by PLN 51 million in the current city budget, and current expenses are understated by PLN 158 million, he said. – An additional deficit in addition to the official debt was hidden in the budget, amounting to PLN 237 million. These are not made up numbers, they are included in the budget resolution and will be presented at the next session. They concern the sale of real estate – PLN 10 million, rents from municipal buildings – PLN 7 million, taxes from civil and legal transactions – PLN 7 million, Government Road Development Fund – PLN 6 million. All this is revenue that will not flow into the city budget, but is included in it only to balance it, emphasized Łukasz Urbańczyk.
It was similar in the case of expenses. – Educational institutions – PLN 89 million, payments to GZM – PLN 19 million and housing maintenance costs – PLN 12 million were not entered. There are many such items, he added.