President of the Municipality of Kotor, Mr Željko Aprcović, says in the interview for Dnevne novine that a meeting of all political parties in Kotor will be initiated at the beginning of this month. The meeting would discuss future activities of local self-government and their contribution to addressing many problems.
“Since I started performing the function of a president of the municipality, I’ve been trying to make all caucuses active participants in political events. I want all councilors who were elected in 2016 to take part in local parliament and put forward their suggestions regarding planning documents and make contribution in the identification of problems and proposals for resolving those problems. For that reason, I will initiate all-party meeting”, says Mr Aprcović.
He says that the fact that local self-government authorities didn’t have secretaries to carry out policy at the time he started performing his function really hurt him.
“As you probably know, the budget wasn’t adopted either and we had to render decision on temporary financing. We had to face with those problems first, appoint people and create space in order to submit tenders for staff. Tourist season wasn’t prepared the way it deserved. Every public utility service in Kotor was unprepared. Decisions which were supposed bring considerable income haven’t been rendered and a huge amount of finances was lost. In addition, the municipality of Kotor failed to adopt Strategic plan defining the direction in which local self-government will be moving in the next five years”, added Mr Aprcović.
According to him, local self-government should be sensitive to the needs of citizens.
“We are going to revive the spirit of this old town through cultural events. Our talented people will have enough space to display their quality. Kotor deserves that”, says Mr Arpcović.
Local self-government in Kotor wants to provide investors with adequate law infrastructure so that they can build their own hotel and tourist capacities.
“In August we adopted three decisions concerning construction of Bigova Bay. There will be 1.500 beds with accompanying amenities. Around 600 beds would be in hotels and other s would be placed in luxury villas”, said Mr Aprcović.
Mr Apcović touched on the locations near old urban lake – Jugocoeania and former Fjord hotel.
“Investors are faced with the problem of inappropriate location for the removal of construction materials. Due to the deficit in hotel accommodation, we talked with the owner of the former Teuta hotel and we agreed that investor should start the rehabilitation, reconstruction and upgrade of Teuta hotel in the next three to four months. We found out that the new owner of the former rehab center Vrmac started reconstruction and adaptation of hotel and tourist capacities in the promontory of Marko”, said Mr Aprcović.
As far as the Port is concerned, Mr Aprcović reminded that it was in the ownership of the municipality and it would definitely be interesting since cruising tourism indicates that we are going to have 500.000 tourists visiting Kotor this year.
“Tourist season in Kotor is characterized by record results which resulted in record profit”, concluded Mr Aprcović.
