On 15 July, the Borino Municipal Council gave preliminary approval for 19 municipal pastures to have their designated use and legal status changed because of an unnamed interest in tourism development. The mayor’s report contains no specific investor, project or expected benefit for the municipality. It does not even state the total area of the affected land, while the cadastral identifiers of four properties were changed immediately before the vote.
The decision is the first step towards removing 19 pastures from public municipal ownership and making them available for private investment projects. It was adopted with 10 votes in favour, none against and one abstention.
Specific properties, abstract interest
Mayor Mustafa Karaahmed refers to “interest expressed by citizens of the municipality” and their plans to develop tourism.
It is not stated who these citizens are, how many applications were submitted or which of the 19 properties they concern. Nor is it clear what the investment plans actually involve.
There is no information on whether guest houses, hotels, holiday villages, residential buildings or tourist infrastructure are planned.
No investment amounts, deadlines, jobs or future revenues for the municipality are given.
Instead, the proposal is justified with the broad formula of “socio-economic development”.
The amount of land affected is not even stated
According to the mayor’s report, the properties are agricultural land designated for permanent use as “pasture”.
The report, the minutes and adopted Decision No. 312, however, list only the cadastral identifiers.
Neither the area of each property nor the total amount of land whose designated use is to be changed is stated.
The area can be established for only three of the pastures because the same properties also appear in the previous Decision No. 311, supplementing the annual programme for the management and disposal of municipal property.
Property 05462.205.5 covers 2,000 sq m, 05462.129.212 covers 2,700 sq m, and 06879.106.35 covers 941 sq m.
Their combined area is 5,641 sq m, or 0.5641 hectares.
For the other 16 pastures, the materials provided contain no information.
This means it is impossible to establish how much municipal land is covered by the decision as a whole and what proportion of Borino’s pastureland will be affected.
The law allows a change in the designated use of municipal pastures only as an exception.
The municipality must maintain the legally required reserve of permanently grassed land and ensure that there is no shortage of land for the needs of livestock farming.
These requirements are cited in the mayor’s report.
What is missing is the data needed to demonstrate that they have actually been met.
There is no overview of how many pastures the municipality owns, how many are currently used, what local livestock farmers need or how much reserve must remain after the proposed changes.
Without the areas of all 19 properties, neither councillors nor citizens can make such an assessment.
Four properties were changed during the meeting
During the session, a municipal employee announced that “technical errors” had been made and proposed replacing four cadastral identifiers.
Property 05462.129.10 was changed to 05462.128.10.
Property 05462.129.209 was replaced by 05462.129.212.
Property 05462.129.211 became 05462.129.214.
And 05462.194.9 was replaced by 05462.118.39.
These are not minor technical corrections, because every cadastral identifier refers to a specific property.
In effect, councillors were given documents concerning one set of properties, and four of those properties were replaced with different ones immediately before the vote.
No one asked how the errors had occurred or whether the new identifiers had been checked.
The amendments were nevertheless approved unanimously.
This happened only a month after the regional governor returned another property-related decision of the same Municipal Council precisely because of an incorrect cadastral identifier.
Three pastures are already listed for sale
The direction towards future disposal can also be seen in another decision adopted at the same meeting.
Under Decision No. 311, the Municipal Council supplemented the annual programme for the management and disposal of municipal property.
Seven new properties were added to the section for properties intended to be sold through a public tender or competition.
Three of them – 05462.205.5, 05462.129.212 and 06879.106.35 – are also among the 19 pastures for which preliminary approval to change their designated use and status was granted immediately afterwards.
Approval based on trust
During the discussion, council chairman Seydi Sherifov proposed that the decision explicitly state that the properties would be changed from public to private municipal ownership.
The four cadastral identifiers were then corrected on the spot.
No one asked who the interested citizens were, what they intended to build or why precisely these 19 pastures had been selected.
No one requested the areas of the properties or evidence that the needs of local livestock farmers would not be affected.
Thus, the Municipal Council gave preliminary approval for a process that could transform 19 publicly owned pastures into land available for private investment, while the documents provide no clear information about who will invest, what will be built or how much municipal land is involved.
