Councillor Yantar proposed to equalise the salaries of officials with the average in Mykolaiv

Andrii Yantar, a member of Mykolaiv City Council, has proposed to equalise the salaries of employees of the city's departments and utilities with the average salary in Mykolaiv in 2025.

He said this today, 24 December, during a speech at a joint meeting of the deputy commissions on budget and law, according to NikVesti.

According to him, it is necessary to establish a «unified approach to the calculation of salaries». In addition, the maximum salary should not exceed this level.

«The point of the proposal is to introduce a unified approach. The average salary in 2025 for employees of departments, key administrators and municipal enterprises should be limited to the average salary in Mykolaiv in 2025. The maximum salary should also not exceed this figure,» said Andrii Yantar.

He proposed to establish a multiplier for managers — no more than 1.5, while the minimum salary should not be lower than the one set by the state.

«For executives, a coefficient of one and a half is proposed, while the minimum wage cannot be lower than the current minimum wage in Ukraine. This is my suggestion that there should be a system and an equal approach to all departments and utilities. Because when people hear that one of the heads of a utility company receives a bonus of more than a million hryvnias a year, it looks bad, to put it mildly. If it's hard for everyone, it should be hard for everyone,» the councillor stressed.

In response, Fedir Panchenko, a deputy of the Mykolaiv City Council from the party «Propozytsiia», noted that salaries at utility companies are formed in accordance with the law.

«I don't know about bonuses of one million hryvnias. Perhaps, from a purely human point of view, I agree with you. But salaries, in particular at utility companies, are calculated in accordance with the law, not according to wishes. Let's work with the numbers and use them. If you propose to change, for example, 6,800 to 5,900 hryvnias, say it directly, and I will write it down. I will not be able to physically calculate what you have just said and immediately register it as a change,» said Fedir Panchenko.

The average salary in Mykolaiv City Hall is to be increased to 25 thousand

As you know, the budget requests of the Mykolaiv City Council's fund managers for 2026 include an increase in the average estimated salary for local government employees to 25,000 hrryvnias «per person», which is 66.7% more than in 2025, when this figure was 15,000 hryvnias.

Vira Sviatelyk, director of the city council's finance department, said that the salaries in the requests were calculated according to a single principle for all executive bodies of local self-government.

According to her, the salary for 2026 was calculated on the basis of 25 thousand hryvnias for each employee. This is a single position for all local governments. Then this amount was multiplied by the number of staff units of each key spending unit, and the payroll was formed.

It should be noted that the updated structure of executive bodies, which the deputies failed to approve, did not reduce the number of executive bodies and still has 1115 employees.

For example, on 11 December, the deputies of Mykolaiv City Council did not have enough votes to include the issue of approving the updated structure of executive bodies on the agenda.

In addition, on 14 November, during a meeting of the land commission, the deputies failed to pass a resolution due to a lack of votes, and a similar situation repeated itself on 18 November at a meeting of the specialised commission. The document also failed to move forward on 25 November, when the draft was considered for the second time by the Health and Social Protection Commission, as the deputies again failed to support the proposed changes.

Earlier it was reported that the Mykolaiv Department of Education proposed to establish municipal allowances for preschool teachers: 5,200 hryvnias for those who work full-time or in a mixed format, and 2,600 hryvnias for those who work remotely.

We would also like to remind you that the Mayor of Mykolaiv, Oleksandr Sienkevych, promised that departments, offices and utilities would report to the city council before the adoption of the 2026 budget.

For more information, see NikVesti «City Council Session Approves Budget Adjustments for 2025: What Housing and Utilities Will Receive and What Items Were Cut».

As a reminder, three weeks ago, all budget payments were suspended in Mykolaiv, as reported by sources in the Mykolaiv City Council. The main spending units were then instructed to suspend all payments for expenditures that did not relate to protected items, namely public sector salaries and utility bills. At the time, it was reported that the reason for this was the lack of budget funds to cover the protected budget items until the end of the year. The problem had been known for a long time, as the annual budget had not included funds for mandatory payments by the end of the year. The mayor's office hoped that budget overruns and savings during the year would help find the funds. However, this did not happen.

Later, Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych said that the city budget was looking for 60 million hryvnias for salaries and utilities.

NikVesti analysed the proposed changes to the distribution of expenditures in Mykolaiv' s budget and calculated that 7.2 million hryvnias would be allocated for salaries and utility bills (in the budget, this is an expenditure item «Management and administration in the relevant area») for the city's budget managers, rather than the 60 million hryvnias previously mentioned by the mayor.