In Sacueni, the City Hall is a fundamental institution for the community to develop. We have spokeb with Csaba Beres, the mayor, and he has told u show thinks work in Sacueni, what is the best and worst of the city and what the City Hall does and intends to do to improve the city.
In romania, local governments operate on the basics of a complex, Beres thinks that bureaucratic system could be simplified with online payment services, so that all services could be uploaded to the City Hall’s website, “but this requires expensive programs and the population is not prepared for its technical knowledge and skills. (laptop, iPad) which the older age group does not have”.
The building of the government needs to be modernized and expanded , the building has 70-80 years, “we want to create a system of customization and reception, which can be customized with a serial number, so that the reception windows are in one place and any documents are available to customers in like half an hour”.
If we ask about the people who is working in the City Hall, the average age of those working in the city hall is about 45 years, “In the last 12 years we have hired people who have mostly graduated from university and occupy various positions both in the office and in the green areas outside”. The Mayor have talked about his opinión too “ Of course, as a manager, I am not completely satisfied with the efficiency and approach to work. Continuous development and optimization in the field of people is also needed. There is a plan for a large-scale government reorganization, which can be expected from January this year until April-May, when each person will be tested, inspected and assessed. In the past period, the salaries of city hall employees have been increased, which serves as a motivation to be able to perform as well as possible”.
Csaba Beres considers that his job as a Mayor is no really a job but a service to the community “I don’t take it as a job, but as a community improvement, often above my strength, but for me it’s not a burden because I like to do it, even if I get sick or get tired, it’s a kind of self-realization in my life and I think if I will work in another place, I will have a job that will be something improving that benefits the community.
We wanted to know the best and the worst things of Sacueni. What is good about Sacueni is that it is well positioned geographically, rich in water, rich in fish and wildlife around. It has a railway junction and a border crossing. Good landscapes and areas that can be used for tourism, thermal water, castles, gullies, forests, lakes. There will be a census next year, which has been 12,000 so far, and we are curious if that number will increase. “We have a strategy to keep the young people here, although this might not stimulate reproduction but we hope that the inclusion of young people will increase the number of the city’s population. We are working on developments such as the swimming pool where, in addition to the 12,000 inhabitants, we are counting on another 8,000 people to come visit the swimming pool” says Beres. Although the renovation of the theater building to an European standard will help the development of the city, also Sacueni is a school center where 2,200 children can be found. Cadea has a Vocational School Center and a theoretical one in Sacueni. This is how Sacueni can become a regional center.
“There are some bad things in the town but we don’t see the danger in it but the work we have to do” says Beres. The worst is that the drinkable water source and the sevage sludge does not work properly. The next problem is the modernization of the garbage collection, “we try to change the mentality of the people, and also we try to teach the kids what is the selective garbage collection”. The next problem is the infrastructure of the city. 70-80% of the streets does not have asphalt, but they are working on it. “We hope that we can change this the next year in Sacueni and the villages” says the Mayor.
The City Hall tries to improve the city day by day and the Mayor is proud of what the got until now. In Sacueni and in Ciocaia, Cadea and Sannicolau de Munte, the water network and the waste water network is new, and it did not work until last year. “In the 20th century there were villages where the water network was inexistent, but we made it. This is what I consider one of the greatest achievements of the City Hall”. In 80% of the streets of Sacueni got a new water and wastewater network. The bypass railway was also made and it will be done until the end of December, 80% of the 6000 cars that used to pass through Sacueni, now don’t have to. The biggest problem were the 1200 trucks that passed Sacueni but now that changed.
If we ask about the Budget of the City Hall we discover that the Sacueni government is managed by a relatively poor Budget, so it has to deal with major problemas and obstacles with the own Budget and European Union projects as well. One of the problemas that are waiting for improvement is the drinking wáter network, therefore, they also have to provide special filter equipment, wich will hopefully be available this January. The same problema applies to the surrounding villages.
The next problem is that the infrastructure is not asphalted in 70-80% of the city, and this is also typical of the surrounding villages. Another problem is the land bookkeeping. “We managed to get from 170 positions to 630 positions and sent a documentation to the Bucharest Ministry of Development. It took a lot of work, we succeeded in making the land bookkeping of most incividuals”.
Lack of jobs is a big problem in Sacueni, between 500 and 1000 people are going elsewhere to work. The Mayor wants to solve this problema “now we are working on building an industrial park and this way people will stay here in Sacueni”.
The City Hall tries to involve the population as much as possible in the activities of the city, and with less success, of course, a mentality change is needed. They are working to make Sacueni a regional center, both at the educational level and in the cultural sense. They are developing the education system, for which they still have a cast. In order to become a cultural center, they have built a theater where they intend to invite various performers and introduce the performances, with more extensive programs such as dance, folkdance, theater performances, etc. They design camps with different themes, art, linguistic, religious or traditional, for which we can use the theater as well as the museum building.
They are also thinking about an economic center, “we have managed to bring an industrial park to Sacueni, we have managed to get its legal status, the energy and water are led there, and we will be able to operate an initially 5-hectare industrial park with the possibility of expansion. If we succeed in realizing the industrial park, companies would be interested and enter the bridge, then we could say that it would be a cultural, educational and industrial regional center. People from the surrounding regions could then come here to study, have fun, work and play sports. Here I would like to mention the football pitch, the sports hall and the swimming pool, which we managed to build next to the school with all the money, helping to make Sacueni become a sports center. Opposite the swimming pool is a thermal water beach, so there is a recreation center. We consider it important to develop the region economically and, of course, our city as well”.
Sacueni has also some atractive things and the City Hall wants to develop them. The football academy in Debrecen would like to place a football academy in Sacueni, which would be very important for the young people of Sacueni from the point of view of a healthy lifestyle. We are planning an aquapark, taking advantage of the opportunities provided by thermal water. The spa bath in Sannicolau de Munte is also beautiful. There are a lot of plans that we want to do and implement. The city and the surrounding villages are having some famous castles, there is a good wine cellar, a tunnel system, a thermal school with a riding school and a stronghold in the area.
Csaba Beres says: “ we are giving up more and more plots, trying to implement development strategies, I would like to mention that we managed to attract a turkish investor who bought about 14 hectares of land in Sacueni, and here we are trying to build a new city part” .
The City Hall is working everyday to improve the city and to get to develop Sacueni.