Sofia’s Cty Hall has published its plans for the management and development of the Bulgarian capital until 2011 on its website, which includes one of mayor Boiko Borissov’s more controversial ideas, namely the mandatory registration of its residents.

One of the main priorities outlined in the new strategy is the mayor’s proposal for the adoption of “properly functioning mechanism” for address registration and “control over the migration”. It appears that City Hall believes migration to be a threat, since it is written down in the section on improving public order and security.

Currently, address registration is not obligatory, merely a recommendation. All individuals can do so, if they wish, at the municipality. In communist times, the practice was mandatory and the managers of all apartment buildings were charged with keeping a register of all the tenants and property owners in the building.

By developing this “functioning mechanism” for address registration, City Hall hopes to get “a full picture” of all the individuals permanently and temporary residing in the capital at any time. The deadline for implementing this is December 2008, but City Hall itself is not quite clear how it plans to accomplish that.

A step towards fulfilling this part of the strategy is the creation of a new commission dealing with demographic matters, City Hall said after presenting its plans. According to Bulgarian media, this would be followed by an active campaign to limiting the internal migration from other areas of the country into the capital.

Statistical data shows Sofia had a population of 1.38 million in 2006. The city occupies less than one per cent of Bulgaria’s territory, but was home to one seventh of its population and one sixth of its labour force when the last census was carried out in 2001. However, unofficial estimates claim that the number of current Sofia residents is closer to two million.

Contacted by The Sofia Echo for clarification, City Hall spokesperson Tsvetanka Krusteva said that the new commission would actually “only deal with the Roma issues”.
Sofia municipality cannot decide the issue on its own, so Borissov and his team plan to draft a number of proposals, which would then be sent to the appropriate state institutions for changes in the regulations concerning the registration procedure, she added.

The exact details of how “control over migration” would be implemented remains unclear.

Another issue that the mayor and his councillors are determined to take care of is the Roma housing problem, with major reconstructions of the Roma ghettos planned by end-2011, when current term of Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov expires.

The municipality wants to build new housing within those districts, as well as repairing the existing ones, but there too it remains unclear how it plans to persuade Sofia residents to accept Roma as neighbours. Such opposition was the main reason why the idea for prefab housing did not take off, although City Hall hopes that its planned public debates and campaigns for Roma integration will yield a result.

The 60-pages sustainable development strategy is yet to be adopted by the municipal council, but with Borissov’s Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) party holding 33 of the 61 seats on the council, it is a question of when, rather than if, it gets adopted.

It covers a number of financial, economy, property, infrastructure, transport, energy and social issues.

Among its targets is increasing the collection rate of local taxes, fees and fines to 100 per cent, while the amount collected should increase by 150 per cent in 2011, as compared with 2007. To achieve that goal, a new management and control system for the collection of local taxes, fees and fines would be designed and implemented by the end of 2008.

The municipality also wants to increase the revenue from leased municipal property and from advertising fourfold. It expects total of 300 million euro to be raised for projects through public-private partnerships.

The city hall will also focus on the construction of council estates, to be rented out to families with proven low incomes. Additionally, four sport halls, Mladost, Severen Park, Lyulin and Ovcha Koupel, would be built by 2011.

Detailed spatial development plans will be designed for Sofia’s housing estates and parks These areas include Iztok, Dianabad, Mladost, Lyulin, Drouzhba, Nadezhda, Obelya, Levski, Studentski Grad boroughs. Twelve new streets will be built and 18 will be broadened; 16 crossroads will be reconstructed, while 13 new underground parking lots will be built. An information system for traffic management comprising 800 sensors, 100 closed circuit TV cameras and 50 data transfer devices will be put into operation by the end of 2008. A design for a new cemetery will be developed by 2011, while the existing ones will be extended, and private cemeteries would be endorsed.
The city hall itself, however, did not know how much money it would need to fund all the projects outlined in the strategy. “There will be public procurements and tenders for some of the projects, some of them will apply for financing from the European Union and different operative programmes. The different directorates that have worked on the strategy might know the resources needed but there isn’t a total evaluation of all the money City Hall will need to implement the strategy,” Krusteva told The Sofia Echo.