The price of the issue: funds to rename Brovary or to help the Ukrainian army

The possible renaming of Brovary to Brovari is questionable in terms of expediency, as it has nothing to do with decommunization. And, most importantly, changing the name of the city will entail additional financial costs, and these funds would be better spent on the Armed Forces. This opinion is shared by both residents of Brovary and experts, UNN writes .

Details

From the very beginning of the decommunization process in Ukraine, the question immediately arose: how much would it cost to rename streets and change the names of settlements, and on whose shoulders would the main financial costs fall?

For example, changing the name of any settlement entails replacing signs at the entrances to them, highways throughout Ukraine; printing new maps, atlases, guidebooks; making new signs, at least for state and municipal institutions, enterprises, and organizations. Add to this the change of stamps, seals; printing of new documentation forms.

In 2015, when decommunization started, some experts said that a city with a population of 30-80 thousand would cost about ten million hryvnias to rename.

At the same time, when in May 2016 the Verkhovna Rada renamed the fourth most populous city in Ukraine, Dnipropetrovs'k, to Dnipro, Mayor Borys Filatov said that the cost of changing the name would not exceed 800,000 hryvnias. However, he did not specify which expenditure items he was talking about.

Be that as it may, additional financial costs are unavoidable in any case. And it doesn't matter whether they come from the state or local budgets, or whether legal entities will have to spend them. In this case, the question arises as to the very expediency of these costs, when the country has been repelling full-scale Russian aggression for three years, and the entire country is working for the needs of the Defense Forces.

The issue of this expediency is especially evident in the context of the possible renaming of Brovary.

The relevant resolution to change the name of the city from Brovary to Brovari was registered in the Verkhovna Rada by a group of MPs led by Roman Lozynsky, a representative of the Voice faction.

And one could find logic in the actions of the authors of the documents if the name "Brovary" was somehow connected to the Russian or communist past. But, as experts rightly point out, the possible renaming of Brovary has nothing to do with decommunization.

In my personal opinion, the name "Brovary" is not associated with the communist past. The name of the city is not Red Partisan, right? In this particular situation, I am convinced that we should keep the current name. In addition, renaming means additional costs that are not reasonable today, as with many other renaming

The same opinion is shared by the deputies of the Brovary council, who emphasize the additional costs associated with the renaming and that these funds should be better spent on supporting the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

I work in the department of veterans. And every month we go to a session and ask for funds for mobilized guys, for wounded guys. And my heart and soul will bleed if I know that our social security department will spend money on renaming documentation. Because these funds would be better spent on more necessary items of expenditure,

Another member of the city council, business representative Viktor Gaidukov, is in solidarity with her.

All enterprises will have to change their documentation. New signs will have to be made in the city. Every resident will have to change everything. No one has calculated it, but it is very expensive. These funds can be spent on the Armed Forces, and this is much more important today,

Based on these positions, the Brovary City Council decided to appeal to the Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Ruslan Stefanchuk, with a request not to submit a draft resolution to rename Brovary to Brovari.

"Given that we have repeatedly considered the initiative to rename the city at the relevant committee of the Verkhovna Rada, and that we have repeatedly appealed with certain justifications, the deputies today decided to adopt the relevant decision of the local government and appeal to the Verkhovna Rada to keep the historical name of Brovary.

In my opinion, taking into account independent polls, with today's vote, when 24 deputies supported the appeal to the Verkhovna Rada, we have clearly expressed the opinion of the residents that the city should be called Brovary," commented Brovary Mayor Ihor Sapozhko.

So, we have a situation where the Brovary community and the expert community understand that renaming Brovary is inappropriate, at least in terms of unnecessary spending of money that would be better spent on supporting the army.

Now it remains to be seen whether MPs have this understanding..

Renaming Brovary: a democracy test for the Verkhovna RadaJul 16 2024, 01:29 PM • 225920 views