Development vision of Subotica

SAŠA VUČINIĆ, MAYOR OF SUBOTICA

DEVELOPMENT VISION OF SUBOTICA

Upon the accession to my office as a Mayor, my primary intention was to lead the city, together with its citizens, to the road of accelerated progress, which will provide new jobs and better life for all who want a decent living from their work.

Our core task in the forthcoming period is to make Subotica one of the most beautiful and best regulated cities not only in the country, but also in the border region, having the opportunity of facilitated access to employment and incomes for its citizens, and to implement their personal economic prosperity.  In order to achieve this objective, our strategy should be in the function of attracting investments, which would enable the City's faster economic development.

Along this concept, I will make utmost efforts to implement the following top priorities: 

finishing the building of the highway branching, the city pool, waste water treatment plant and the theatre building, implementing the Master Plan of Palic and the industrial zone, developing infrastructure, constructing the gas supply network on the whole territory of the city, extending the water distribution and sewage networks, modernising the public transport system with the introduction of a new system of benefits, solving the issue of waste disposal, regenerating school and preschool buildings and listed buildings in the city centre, developing social care and care about the youngest and the senior citizens of Subotica. 

Infrastructural equipping is a precondition for an active policy on attracting new investments to the city.  New investments are an impetus to start building and construction and, subsequently, other economic activities as well.   Due to the lack of building land, it will be necessary to provide new adequate areas and to equip new building lands.

Agricultural production and processing, as an activity engaging a massive number of local citizens and providing subsistence for many, are one of the crucial segments in the development potentials of the region.  Within its competence, the local self-government will devote special attention to the promotion of the farmers’ position.

Tourism development is also important, since tourism, as the city’s development capacity, has not been exploited appropriately so far. Hence, the local government, within its mandate, will address this issue as well, and will actively cooperate with the institutions of the province and the state on implementing the Master Plan of Palic.

The economic prosperity of the city will enable more significant allocations for social superstructure institutions, better standing for their employees, and, first and foremost, higher appropriations for children, the youth, the athletes, and  also for the senior citizens and other, socially vulnerable groups. 

The cross-border and international cooperation programme will serve the ambition that, likewise Szeged, Pécs, Osijek, Arad and other successful cities in the region, Subotica also develops into a respected Euro destination.

Fostering multiculturalism, mutual trust and tolerance, as the city’s values, speeded up economic development will in the best way contribute to the simultaneous development of our local community having diverse ethnic, cultural, confessional and other characteristics and needs.

We will work by all odds on the effective and accountable relations in the local administration, public companies and other local institutions, in order to create an atmosphere of legality and legitimacy in public services and thus to build the trust of citizens in local authorities.  The institutions of the future local self-government will be decentralised and reformed most rationally in line with the European standards, so that they could most efficiently be of service to the citizens.  The implementation of these objectives will be pursued with full accountability, so that they result in rational, effective and responsive solutions fulfilling the needs and expectations of the citizens, and not of the party or ethnic elites.

In development issues of interest for the city, the future local administration will create the institutions of permanent dialogue, as partnerships of the local authorities and the capital owners, trade unions and other stakeholders of the civil sector and the citizens.

Gradually, we will rationalise and reconstruct the institutions of social superstructure and define the intellectual verticals of the city by stimulating creativity, fostering values, achievements and prestige, with due respect to the specific needs of citizens in minority position.

Endurance in maintaining our specificities and insisting on our political tradition made the Subotica political value model acceptable for the whole country.

Setting up an equal treatment attitude of the local self-government to all national communities remains a priority and the basis of the good political atmosphere in the city.