District administrations in Mykolaiv will be enlisted to help Mykolaiv Parks with tree pruning

‘Mykolaiv Parks’ is struggling to cope with tree pruning: additional municipal enterprises and district administrations will be brought in to help. Photo: NikVesti archive

The municipal enterprise Mykolaiv Parks is unable to cope with the large number of requests for tree pruning, so the municipal enterprise «GDMB» and district administrations will be brought in to help.

This was discussed during a meeting of the Mykolaiv City Council’s Housing and Utilities Committee on 24 March, reports NikVesti.

As explained by Ihor Nabatov, deputy director of the Housing and Utilities Department, changes to the utility reform programme were prepared because ‘Mykolaiv Parks’ currently lacks the capacity to cover the entire city.

«At present, the capacity of Mykolaiv Parks in terms of available cherry pickers is insufficient to provide pruning and removal services across the whole city of Mykolaiv. Sometimes it becomes necessary to engage the resources of the municipal enterprise «GDMB» (Self-financing Construction Mechanisation Unit, — note). Therefore, to ensure everything is in order from the perspective of budgetary legislation, we are adding them to the list of contractors,» noted Ihor Nabatov.

The official emphasised that this would not require additional funds from the budget — the funding would simply be distributed among the enterprises within the limits of the amounts already approved.

Furthermore, the number of tree felling permits already approved by the State Environmental Inspectorate and the Housing and Utilities Department significantly exceeds the physical capacity of Mykolaiv Parks. Therefore, it was decided to divide the areas of responsibility within the city.

«We are adding district administrations to the list of contractors. They will work on internal residential areas (in courtyards), whilst the municipal enterprise Mykolaiv Parks will cover all other areas across the city of Mykolaiv,» explained Ihor Nabatov.

According to Ihor Nabatov, residents can, as before, contact Mykolaiv Parks regarding the need to fell trees, and the company will itself forward the requests to the district administrations for work to be carried out in the courtyards.

It should be noted that the municipal enterprise Mykolaiv Parks planned to increase its workforce from 346 to 389 people in order to service all districts of the city independently. In doing so, the enterprise is requesting 164 million hryvnias from the budget.

Overall, funding for the Mykolaiv Parks municipal enterprise has increased significantly over the last six years — from 8.6 million hryvnias in 2020 to 167.2 million hryvnias in 2023. In 2024, the enterprise’s budget stood at 144 million hryvnias, which is slightly less than in the previous year.

At the same time, as of August 2024, the municipal enterprise had 262 staff members. This is six times more than in 2021, when the figure stood at 39 people. However, the enterprise still needs around 400 more staff members, said director Dmytro Chuchmai.