The goal is clear: Downloading the mayor

The budget of Sofia for 2025 with planned costs for BGN 2.84 billion has not yet been accepted and for this reason the Sofia Municipality of Bavi payments for over BGN 100 million. Due to unpaid funds, companies that carry out repair and construction activities have also discontinued work.

And Mayor Vasil Terziev assures that there is a plan to deal with the crisis.

It remained without one of its coalition partners – the Save Sofia Party (SS), which withdrew their confidence and its municipal councilors separated into an independent group, Terziev continues to rely on the support of PP -DB. In front of the municipality building on 33 Moskovska Street, citizens will be gathered today, who have been organized on social networks for several days at an event entitled: « Support for the Mayor of Sofia against the Mafia ».

Siege

This majority stalled the budget update for 2024 and replaced without competitions the boards of 6 key municipal companies – « Toplofikatsiya Sofia », « Sofinvest », « Metropolitan », « Center for Urban Mobility », « Sofia Motor Transport » and « Sofia Electric Transport ». It is not known what the losses are, how to spend the annual subsidies that are allocated (BGN 16.5 million only for motor transport), how much the administration is inflated. According to the Deputy Mayor for Financial Affairs, Ivan Vasilev has a total of 700 administration in the four companies responsible for transport in Sofia. However, drivers do not reach – 100 people in electric transport and another 250 in bus transport.

The mayor of Sofia shows relentlessness on the demands of the unions: BGN 400 increase of salaries from March 1 this year, BGN 500 for 2026, BGN 600 in 2027 for all 7000 employees. They also insist on providing sanitary facilities and toilets, improving lighting, heating and working uniform clothing. The offer of Terziev and his team is an increase of one hundred leva and a higher bonus, which protesters refuse.

There is everything in the protests – commands from party towers, trade union clientelism (union leaders are municipal councilors from GERB and BSP) and accumulated injustice. The problems are not new, the GERB capital management has been accumulated over the years, but Terziev did not take up them on time, although it halves its term. Urban transport workers began protesting more than a month before the strike on May 14, but the mayor ignored the problem.

According to the chairman of the Standing Committee on Transport and Road Safety in the SOC Ivan Takov (BSP), the Commission has been waiting for the economic framework for the transport to be provided for preliminary viewing for 6 months. « More than a month ago, we also demanded a developed scenario of the economic framework with an increase in the salaries of employees in the transport companies with 100, 200, 300 and 400 levs. So far, nothing has been provided to us by the mayor’s team, » Takov said. However, after the resignation of the Deputy Mayor of Transport Ilian Pavlov, his deputy was not found. However, the same Pavlov had said that for 2024 « Sofia has a record budget for public transport, for which BGN 505 million was provided ». How are this money spent, which is almost one fifth of last year’s expenses of the capital?

« After we have a complete inadequacy of the mayor and the administration of Sofia Municipality, obviously the SOC will have to take things in its own hands, » Takov said days ago. In fact, the SOC has not missed them – and it is unlikely to allow any change in the work of transport companies that are still at a loss. The « economic majority » in the SOC is reproduced in parliament and the executive branch, so that it will not be resulted in support for reform.

And on May 19, Vasil Terziev failed to negotiate with the protesters: the mayor of Sofia had said he was ready to negotiate if the transport was resumed.

Can the state still help? Tens of millions of levs are poured every year in the city transport every year. For subsidies (which do not finance the costs of staff, BA) for 2025 the Ministry of Finance allocates BGN 106 million to the Sofia Municipality, which is BGN 17 million more than the year. – So much money has been requested for the Metro’s metro guard. (For comparison, for 2022-2023, BGN 89 million has been allocated as for 2024.) Finance Minister Temenuzhka Petkova advised Terziev to restructure the costs-no budget has not yet accepted for 2025 to provide funds for higher salaries.

« I come with the decisions and the team » Where are they? In the fall of 2023, the economist Vasil Terziev, one of the creators of Teleric – Ιτ -Company, sold for a record $ 262 million, assured the Sofia citizens that he would find solutions to the city’s problems. Two years later, even the site of Sofia Municipality is the same.

Terziev is not the only mayor in Bulgaria who works without a majority in the City Council. However, he has been criticized for being isolated with his team of advisers instead of seeking majorities for certain goals and priorities in SOCs. The Sofia Municipality does not yet have the promised new structure of the administration. There is also no real management program with deadlines and specific measures – the 19 priorities announced in mid -2024 are far from one. Transport and cleanliness are key to a city, and the public contracts have not yet been launched for selecting companies for the cleaning of the city for 2025 – an activity for which BGN 302.1 million is scheduled.

By the end of July this year The chief architect of Sofia was Zdravko Zdravkov, who had been performing this position since 2016. Then initially temporary, and after a controversial competition – and permanently, the post was occupied by arch. Bogdana Panayotova, Terziev’s favorite. Her choice has caused a quake in the PP -DB coalition – in the public position « We continue the change » objected to Panayotova, « whose professional biography and actions raise serious doubts about the integrity and independence of decision -making. » In response, the mayor explained that he had sent her to a polygraph and everything is fine. Construction in Sofia continues with full steam.

GERB leader Boyko Borisov’s ulcerative comment that the Sophians should « suffer » the change, that is, Vasil Terziev’s choice, he can mobilize the PP-DB supporters. Sofia is key to the coalition – 14 of its 36 MPs have been selected from the metropolitan areas. But the effect will be temporary. In the long run, Terziev will have to choose – to be brave and act politically, or to finish his mandate as a person of changing his hands because of a chronic lack of will to clear the old models.