For the second consecutive year, the Dryanovo Municipal Council has refused to approve the annual report of the “Nadezhda-1925” community centre in the village of Turk-incha. The only reason given for the rejection was blunt: “There is no activity there; the building remains locked.”

There is nothing new about the case. The same thing happened last year, when the Dryanovo council rejected the report of the “Nadezhda-1925” community centre on the same grounds. That, however, did not prevent the inactive institution from receiving a state subsidy for 2025 that was ten times higher than the amount allocated in 2024.

Spending without activity

The disputed report of “Nadezhda-1925” is almost a repeat of the previous one.

In 2025, the community centre had three clubs – one fewer than in 2024 – but the report suggests that their existence was largely formal and unsupported by meaningful activity.

Meanwhile, the subsidy increased from BGN 400 in 2024 to almost BGN 4,000 in 2025. The money was spent on travel expenses, internet, accounting and legal services. Not a single lev was spent on club activities or cultural events.

A library with almost no readers

The community centre library recorded just four visits throughout 2025. The previous year there had been six.

With a collection of around 2,800 books and 10 new titles purchased during the year, interest in the library appears to be virtually non-existent.

Conversation and knitting

The only permanently active club is “Third Age”, with seven members.

According to the documentation, they meet for conversation, knitting, chess and backgammon – activities that resemble those of a pensioners’ club more than a cultural centre.

Two other temporary clubs also operate at the community centre.

The “Photo” club has three members who are said to be involved in “photographing natural landmarks, collecting and arranging photographs on display boards and organising an exhibition”. The report provides no details about any actual exhibitions.

The greatest interest in 2025 appears to have been in the tourism club, which has six members. Its activities “include visits to various landmarks and sites across the region and the country”, but the report provides no details of when or where these visits took place.

That is effectively the extent of the club activity at “Nadezhda-1925”.

Groups with no stage appearances

The community centre also lists three artistic groups: the Bulgarian folk music group “Boyarsko Nastroenie”, the folklore ensemble “Trapezitsa” and a singing school featuring the “Bolyarka” trio.

But there is no information on where they perform, because the report contains no evidence of concert activity.

The financial report also contains no information about fees or performance payments, raising the question of whether these are genuinely active groups or simply names included to fill out the annual report.

A rejected report changes nothing

This is the only community centre report that Dryanovo councillors have refused to approve, but the decision changes little for “Nadezhda-1925”.

Despite the lack of activity and the rejection of its report, the community centre will continue to receive state funding. Dryanovo municipality has no authority to control how that money is spent.

The only institution in Bulgaria with powers to audit cultural spending is the Public Financial Inspection Agency. But its role is to establish whether expenditure has been legally documented, not whether the spending itself was justified or useful.

In this case, the municipality is effectively little more than a conduit for community-centre funding. Its intervention is limited to distributing subsidies, which should be done according to clear rules and public criteria based on the centres’ activity reports.

That was also the conclusion of the Administrative Court in Gabrovo in October 2025, when it annulled a decision by a temporary municipal commission in Dryanovo allocating subsidy money to community centres.

The “Nadezhda-1925” report suggests that the new allocation system may actually have benefited the inactive community centre.

That raises the broader question of whether subsidies are really being allocated on the basis of activity – or for something else.

The village of Turk-incha in Dryanovo municipality has a population of around 30 people.

Its small population is not, however, the reason there are two community centres in the village.

Almost nobody appears to know anything about one of them – “Nadezhda-1925”. Its chairman is Manol Petrov, who since the centre was established in 2019 has regularly submitted activity reports and taken part in allocating subsidies to the other community centres as well.

“I’ve only seen Manol once. He doesn’t come to the village,” the acting mayor of the neighbouring village of Kereka, Yordan Doynov, who also administratively serves Turk-incha, told “Za Istinata” in June 2025.

Asked whether the community centre was actually functioning, he replied: “For the five years I’ve been mayor, I haven’t heard of anything being done there. That’s why the people set up a second community centre.”