Dmitry Kozak presided over the meeting of the Organizational Committee on preparations and celebration of the 1150th anniversary of Smolensk

Today in the Smolensk region Administration building Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak presided over the nonscheduled meeting of the Federal Organizational Committee on preparations and celebration of the 1150th anniversary of Smolensk.

The plenary meeting of the Organizational Committee was held in the grand hall of the Smolensk region Administration building. The meeting was attended by the Organizational Committee members: Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation Vladimir Medinsky, State Secretary of the Union State Grgory Rapota, Bishop of Smolensk and Vyazma Panteleimon and other participants.

The governor of the region Alexey Ostrovskiy reported on the current preparations for celebrating the anniversary of Smolensk. According to the Plan of main activities in 2012 it was planned to spend 5 813,43 million rubles (including 6 086, 21 million rubles not spent in 2010-2011), among which 3 607,13 million rubles from the federal funds, 995,83 million rubles from the budget of Smolensk region and 1 210,47 million rubles from the extra-budgetary funds. The plan for the previous year was formed basing on the actual availability of funds from all the funding sources and considering the changes in volume of funding for some activities of the Plan and the volume of work not done in 2010-11.

Actual fund spending for the year of 2012 amounted to 4 605,76 million rubles or 79,23%.

In 2012 the work on the two activities of the third part of the Plan was successfully completed: the construction of the State Archive storing 1,5 items and the construction of the multi-level junction at the 382nd kilometer of M-1 “Belarus” highway. Setting in operation the latter has greatly improved the transport characteristics of the Smolensk part of the M-1 highway, decreased the traffic of heavy vehicles through the living districts of the city and provided the shortest way to enter Smolensk.

The Governor paid special attention to the issue of developing and modernizing the network of street roads of the city. Within 2012 the “Resurs” Ltd. company didn’t start fulfilling its contract obligations to reconstruct and repair the five street roads of Smolensk. So the regional and local authorities had to terminate the contract with this company. Alexey Ostrovskiy hopes that the litigation will be finished shortly and the final court decision will be in favor of the region, the city and the people of Smolensk. In this case the competition procedures on the facilities of “Resurs” Ltd. will be started anew.

“In case the litigation takes a long time the Administration of the region together with the City administration will bring these street roads into proper condition with the help of the regional state company “Smolenkavtodor” which will do it as a part of the current repairs paid from the road fund”, – said Ostrovsky.

At the end of the meeting Dmitry Kozak answered the journalists’ questions. Talking to the press Deputy Prime Minister shared his impressions on the progress of the preparations for the anniversary celebrations: “Organizational conclusions have been made. Unfortunately they have been made quite late. The request for the new team, the task for the new team is as follows to try and carry out the plan and the tasks which were set earlier. It is necessary to mobilize all the resources: management, people, equipment and concentrate the funds allocated to the key directions to give the city a festive look”.