site.btaMunicipal Councillors of CC-DB, Socialists Meet, Negotiate on Electing Council Chair

In the coming weeks we will find out who will be the new chairman of the Sofia Municipal Council, Vanya Grigorova said after a Sunday meeting of municipal councilors from BSP for Bulgaria and Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB, Save Sofia) in the municipality building.

According to Grigorova, the thesis that there could be a new election of municipal councillors in the capital was a speculation of BSP's political opponents. Vanya Grigorova and BSP-Sofia chairman Ivan Takov reaffirmed that they are behind the candidate for chair of the Sofia Municipal Council, Diana Tonova, nominated by BSP for Bulgaria. Both of them described the meeting as constructive and announced that talks would probably continue on Wednesday.

In response to a question whether BSP for Bulgaria would support another candidate of CC-DB (Save Sofia) for the post of chairman of the Sofia Municipal Council instead of Boris Bonev, Vanya Grigorova said that first they should find out who the candidate would be.

Even now we have agreement on some of the topics, but we have serious differences on general structural issues, Grigorova added.

Ivan Takov announced that BSP will request a meeting with the management of Toplofikatsiya - Sofia about the readiness for the heating season and the problems with the indebtedness of the company, which is very large. And from the mayor Vasil Terziev they will ask for a report on the current state of the municipality.

According to Boris Bonev, the issue of the new chairman of the Sofia Municipal Council was not discussed, although it became clear that the problem was not in the individual personality characteristics of the candidates. On most of the big issues for Sofia there is an overlap, we talked about those on which there is no agreement, they are not so many, but the best thing is that they are not insurmountable, said Bonev.

It was agreed in principle that even if there are things we cannot agree on, we better do all the others we agree on - in areas such as anti-corruption, revision of GERB's governance, public utilities, the way hundreds of millions of Sofia residents' taxes are spent every year.

Asked by BTA whether more meetings were to be held, Bonev said that on Monday there would be more meetings with the other groups in the Sofia Municipal Council. He added that GERB had not responded to the invitation. Regarding the criticism about the way the municipality is dealing with the severe weather situation, Bonev said that the teams of the Sofia Municipality, the district mayors, the fire and emergency safety services, the Sofia Inspectorate are making very serious efforts to cope with the challenge. In the first four-and-a-half days of the new director of the Capital City Inspectorate, between three and seven times as many fines have already been imposed under municipal ordinances, including thousands of BGN on Sunday on cleaning companies for uncleared bus stops, not having their costs recognised and being sent for additional on-site treatments.