Penza, 19 March 2015. PenzaNews. Bad road situation in Penza is caused by lack of the necessary amount of funds to provide for their repair and upkeep, said the head of the Penza city administration Yuri Krivov during a meeting with bloggers and journalists held late on Wednesday, March 18.

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In the last few years, over 50% of the Penza roads failed to comply with norm requirements, he stressed.

“As we see it, Penza needs to spend from 800 million to 1 billion rubles annually, for a good measure, to bring all our more than 700 km [of roads] up to scratch,” the mayor said.

According to him, the regional road fund contains 2 billion rubles, but the Penza city road fund has only 15 million rubles.

“Despite that, we must find budget funds for this work. What do we have for this year? Only slightly above 18 million rubles are assigned for current road repairs. We included the sum into the municipal schedule for ‘Penzadormost’ for the first half, and special road brigades are already repairing the potholes,” explained the city administration head.

He also announced the upcoming opening of a small-scale asphalt factory as a facility of “Penzadormost.”

“We are expecting the professionals from Vladivostok, who will be arriving on March 20. The factory was built last autumn,” the mayor noted.

57 million rubles more will also be raised to provide for current road repairs, Yuri Krivov stated.

“Out of this sum, 17 million is municipal funds, and 40 million was promised by the governor, but it is still being processed. We will have to receive a so-called announcement letter as per the standard procedure, and only then we will open an official tender,” he said.

The mayor reminded that the list of roads that would be repaired for this sum has been made public for citizen discussion.

“Taking into account the colossal demand in city repairs, we went the way where we should choose the words roads of the trouble bunch. The choice is rich, so to say, but we must decide which ones should we repair using these 57 million rubles,” Yuri Krivov explained.

In addition, the head of the city administration said the sidewalks almost all over the city also need attention.

“Currently, we have 11 million rubles from us, and we expect 26 million rubles from the regional budget. There is also a certain list of objects in need of repairs, but we still would like to start from the city’s historical center,” the mayor said.

He stressed that the current situation leaves no window for the city to allow building new roads.

“But then we got help from the federal budget. The region received about 360 million rubles from the target program, and some of these funds will be spent on Penza city as well. We have three locations: Mezhdurechye (43 million), laying down new rods in the Zarya neighborhood (17 million), and our main headache, reconstruction of Izmaylova and Antonova streets, which would cost about 750 million rubles. Of course, we would like to begin working on it this year,” Yuri Krivov said, adding that they currently only oave 20 million rubles.

He reminded that the city also has about 1 million sq. meters of new roads, out of which 500 sq. meters require repairs, based on the results of defect inspection.

“We already discussed this with our contractors, and they are ready to bring the roads they had laid up to the norms by May 1 this year. However, there are some issues: I am speaking about the ACF [“Asphalt Concrete Factory] that is currently on the way to being deemed bankrupt and will likely be unable to perform its guaranteed obligations,” the mayor said.

During the journalist discussion, Yuri Krivov also said it would be possible to rebalance the budget expenses to allow more funds for city road repairs.

“What is going on in the city is something like a hysteria, and I don’t want to even think somebody intentionally blows it bigger. But if it reaches the critical mass, we will be making the choice. Now, back to the budget. We will get the money, I don’t know [where]. Perhaps we will be forced to stop the construction of a kindergarten, but it goes under a contract. But the roads also affect a great amount of citizens, and the rehousing program affects several thousand people,” the Penza city administration head concluded.