Mayor of Southern Town on secession from Prague: It is an unborn child. We are still thinking about how to do it
The mayor of Prague 11 Jiří Štyler (Movement for Prague 11) came up with a surprising idea at his regular meeting with citizens. According to him, Jižní Město should become an independent municipality. In an interview with Aktuálně.cz, he added that they are already looking for a way to implement this idea with the management. The mayor sees the main motivation behind the separation of the Southern Town from Prague in the budgetary allocation of taxes, which brought more money and greater powers to the Southern Town’s coffers. “I consider myself more and more not a mayor, but a burgrave who, although elected, administers and does only what the municipality allows him to do,” says Štyler.
Are you really thinking about changing the status of the South City from a district to a municipality?
Yes, I am working and looking for a methodology on how to separate the South City, and how the state of the district could be changed to a municipality and what advantages and disadvantages it would have.
So what is the methodology?
We don’t have it yet, we’re working on it. Do you know what an unborn child looks like? You don’t know, you have to wait until they are born. I have regular public meetings with citizens, and one of them asked me how, as mayor, I could solve parking in the South Town. And I answered him that the only way I could solve it was to make a separate South City. This means that the Act on Municipalities No. 128/2000 Coll. applies to us, not the Act on the Capital City of Prague, No. 131/2000 Coll. Because I find that I don’t consider myself more and more a full-fledged mayor and a full-fledged council, but only a burgrave who, although elected, manages and does only what the municipality allows him to do.
Isn’t it just a form of populism for potential voters? Now the tendency is for municipalities to merge rather than separate.
Does 76,000 inhabitants seem small to you? This is by no means a populist move. I’m just finding out what the option is. Capital Prague it has a budgetary allocation of taxes and we only have what the municipality redistributes to us by resolution of its council. If we were an independent municipality, it would definitely be more than the current 2.9 thousand crowns per capita. The larger village within sight of South Town has a larger tax budget than we do. But they fulfill the same obligations towards the state and their citizens as we do. It has its own ordinances, its own zoning plan, it can deal with disturbing the peace at night, parking, dogs running around, etc.
So do you think that Jižní Město could become an independent municipality? Is it really real?
There are some legal steps that would have to be taken. These include, for example, a referendum, and if the citizens had their say… then it could happen. If the municipal representatives will be willing, which they have not been so far, to discuss amendments to the statute, then many mayors will have different and sinful thoughts. I don’t understand why representatives who often don’t even know where the Southern Town is should decide on the zoning plan of the Southern Town.
According to one condition of the section for the ward, you have to be a peripheral part and South City is not.
If we combine it with peripheral urban districts, South City would be a peripheral urban district.
Have you played around with other neighborhoods or had fun with it?
Are you pulling out the unborn baby? It’s just in the preparation process. The mayors of the municipal districts of the capital city of Prague are so bound by the law and the law that some of them very intensively ask how my technology is and the next procedure.
Do you think that in the horizon of a few years, the status of the South City could really be changed?
There are many unknowns. I answered a citizen’s question and the journalists are turning it into a revolution…