Sienkevych promises that Mykolaiv's budget for 2026 will include a list of every object

Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych at a city council session, photo by NikVesti

The mayor of Mykolaiv, Oleksandr Sienkevych, has promised that the city's budget for 2026 will include a facility-by-facility list.

The mayor said this in a comment to the correspondent of NikVesti.

As you know, Mykolaiv's budget used to be approved with an object-by-object description. In fact, this means that the draft budget used to indicate specific objects with the exact amounts to be allocated for them. However, for the last 5 years at least, the city budget has been adopted without an object-by-object description. Although it is not a legal requirement for the adoption of the budget, it promotes transparency: deputies and the public can see where the funds will go, and it reduces the manoeuvre of «manual allocation» throughout the year and increases public accountability.

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When asked by a journalist whether the next year's budget would include an object-by-object description, the mayor replied in the affirmative: «Of course».

The mayor went on to say that departments, offices and municipal enterprises would report to the city council before the budget was adopted.

«The budget will be meagre. Starting from Monday, we will gather a commission and submit protected and priority expenditures to the deputies for consideration. That is, all sectors, all key spending units, departments, offices and utilities will report to the deputies on how much money they need for salaries, utility bills, fuel, consumables, paper, pencils and so on,» said Oleksandr Sienkevych.

After that, the mayor noted, it will become clear how much money the city needs for mandatory needs, and only then will it be possible to talk about the money left over for current and capital expenditures.

«After they have all reported, we will allocate the money for the entire 12 months of next year. We will report what the figure is and we will have a budget for current and capital expenditures. Then, in the second stage, we will distribute these expenditures on an object-by-object basis. Each of the deputies will be able to see each object,» said Oleksandr Sienkevych.

As a reminder, deputies of the Mykolaiv City Council claim that the draft city budget for 2026 has not yet been made public and provided to the deputies, despite the fact that the city council session is scheduled for 30 December, which, according to them, contradicts the council's regulations.

Read also the NikVesti article: «City Council Session Approves Budget Adjustments for 2025: What Housing and Utilities Will Receive and What Articles 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.