Members of the Legislative Assembly suggest allocating additional funds from the budget for repairs.
In 2022, the Sverdlovsk region is only able to complete half of the planned renovations due to insufficient funds in the profile fund. This is mainly because building materials' costs have sharply increased. The fund's savings from citizen contributions are significantly lower than the cost increase. More than a billion rubles were lost due to houses being transferred to special accounts, often without residents' knowledge, and those funds were misused. There are only a few criminal cases initiated against these violations.
The Legislative Assembly of the region currently sees the solution to the problem as finding budgetary funds and subsidizing the fund, similar to other regions like the Tyumen region. However, the Middle Urals will need billions of rubles, which will be challenging to find in the deficit regional budget. Residents might need to wait for better times or consider organizing overhauls independently.
The Legislative Assembly of the Sverdlovsk Region was briefed by the government on the implementation of the overhaul program. In 2021, work was carried out in 1055 houses, requiring 5.1 billion rubles. Construction violations are now isolated, according to Nikolai Smirnov, head of the Ministry of Energy and Housing and Public Utilities.
Despite the Capital Repair Fund's increased budget of 9 billion, fewer houses will be repaired this year.
Nikolai Smirnov, the head of the Ministry of Energy and Housing and Utilities of the Sverdlovsk Region
Since October, contracts for 688 houses have been canceled, despite plans for 1,323 houses. 6 billion rubles will be allocated for contracts with contractors, and 1 billion rubles from the remaining funds will cover elevator replacement costs. Most houses sending fees to the fund have replaced elevators that served for more than 25 years.
The fund is forced to allocate 1.7 billion rubles from the common pool due to the transfer of over 200 houses to special accounts. Currently, there are about 4,000 houses on them, with the fees approaching 9 billion rubles. Nikolai Smirnov noted that these funds are often misused or spent inappropriately, such as for current repairs and creating yard areas.
Also, according to the minister, the majority of management companies are the ones leading the transition to special accounts, accounting for over 70%.
Based on the analysis of the protocols, most of the signatures in them seem to be fake.The minister also shared his view on this.
Money collected from the public for special accounts is often taken out to banks that are not authorized to hold them. However, cases of legal action against such violations are still rare. For example, in the Sverdlovsk region, the Investigative Committee is dealing with cases involving the misuse of 32 million rubles gathered in the accounts of three buildings.
Each management company has its own protection. Why aren't these companies' licenses revoked? The people are simply being robbed. Deputy Viktor Babenko expressed his indignation.
However, the meeting participants explained to their colleague that there is no legal way to withdraw a license in such situations.
Yet, residents lack confidence in the ability of the Criminal Code to raise funds for overhauls. About 90% of the debt comes from special accounts, while the total collection in the region is 96.8%. According to the committee chairman, Valentin Lappo, around 500 million rubles are being collected from the public, and there is a 52 million ruble debt that was deemed impossible to collect at the start of the year, the fund reports. As the deputies pointed out, these funds can be covered by the budget.
However, in the current situation, the overhaul program requires much larger investments. The funds for the work are not sufficient, as the population's tariffs do not consider the 30% increase in the cost of construction materials over the past year, according to fund representatives.
Furthermore, contractors who signed contracts in 2021-2022 based on previously developed design and cost estimates suffered losses upon their closure. Federal documents allowing compensation for increased work during contract execution only became available in January 2023.
As a result, this year, some contractors refused to continue participating in competitive processes, and auctions for several houses had to be held 2-3 times due to lack of applications.
However, adjusting the repair schedule did not resolve the funding issue. Deputies argue that subsidies from the regional budget are needed for the program's implementation, as it would be inappropriate to increase the population's tariff, which already grows annually at the inflation rate.
AT In this, the parliamentarians were naturally supported by Stanislav Sukhanov, director of the Sverdlovsk Region Overhaul Fund, noting that this practice exists in dozens of regions of the Russian Federation, including the Tyumen region. However, the volume of regional support in the latter is limited to about a hundred million. In the Sverdlovsk region, this year alone, at least 2 billion rubles are required, but “it will be very problematic to receive funds for these purposes in the budget with a deficit of 11 billion.”
The editors will continue to monitor the development of the situation.
