Lutsk residents have already had more than one opportunity to express their opinion and position on citywide issues at public hearings. Thus, the tariffs for water supply and sewerage, and for heat supply, proposed for the judgment of the territorial community by the relevant communal enterprises, have already been discussed. The optimization of tariffs for services for the maintenance of buildings and structures and adjacent territories has also been long overdue. This process was initiated by the directors of the housing and communal enterprises (ZhKP), who back on November 10 at a press conference identified the situation with the maintenance of the housing stock as critical. Current funding allows them to perform mainly emergency work. In order to maintain the minimum defined in the list of services that form the apartment fee tariff, there is an urgent need to increase the charges. Currently, the level of reimbursement of the cost of services under the current tariff amounts to only 48% of the cost of all expenses.
The directors of the housing and communal enterprises detailed the current situation in the sphere of maintenance of housing and adjacent territories, in particular, the director of the "M.Zh.K." LTD company (the only private housing and communal enterprise in Lutsk) Valeriy Kovaliuk, the director of ZhKP-11 Stanislav Potaichuk, the director of the KP "Lutsk-spetskomuntrans" Valeriy Kuzmych, and others. They pointed out that the current tariff for the maintenance of the housing stock has not changed since September 2002, while prices and wages have not remained unchanged. Thus, the current tariff was based on a minimum wage of 140 hryvnias, whereas now its level is 332 hryvnias. The housing and communal enterprises are unable to offer qualified workers a salary higher than the minimum. As a result, today the vacancies for janitors are filled only to 72% of the need, only 76% of the required number of cleaners are employed, the positions of locksmiths, electricians, and plumbers are understaffed by 50%, there are 62% vacant positions for workers of construction specialties, and so on. The dynamics of price growth for basic materials (pipes, shut-off valves, roofing materials, fuel and lubricants, etc.) over the same period has grown by an impressive 200-300%. Working at a tariff that does not correspond to real expenses, over the 9 months of the current year the losses of the housing and maintenance organizations amount to 681.21 thousand hryvnias.
Representatives of the state commission for price control (Alla Palokha) and the city commission on the implementation of state regulatory policy (Serhiy Tarasiuk) were involved as experts on tariff optimization. Their recommendations and remarks regarding tariff optimization will necessarily be taken into account when approving at the meeting of the executive committee. The housing and communal enterprises propose to change the tariff for the maintenance of buildings and adjacent territories to 88 kopecks/sq. m for buildings without elevators and 1.08 hryvnias for buildings with elevators, respectively (the current tariff is 37 kopecks/sq. m for buildings without elevators and 50 kopecks/sq. m for buildings with elevators). Lutsk residents present at the public hearings proposed to vote separately on the proposal to support increased tariffs for the collection, removal, and disposal of garbage and on the increase of the tariff for services for the maintenance of buildings and structures and adjacent territories (the collection, removal, and disposal of garbage is included in this tariff). However, both proposals were supported by the majority of those present. In the first case, 106 representatives of the territorial community spoke "for" ("against" – 0, "abstained" – 0), in the second – "for" – 81, "against" – 12, "abstained" – 8.