The governor’s team did not explain why they rented the sports palace.
On May 31, 2022, the Governor of the Chelyabinsk Region, Alexei Teksler, will sum up the results of the work for the past year and outline the priority tasks for the future. This event, which is listed on the agenda of the meeting of the regional Legislative Assembly as the “Governor’s Report on the results of the activities of the government of the Chelyabinsk region for 2021”, is called “Teksler’s message to the elites” in most media with pathos. The event will take place, as they say, without undue modesty: the whole Yunost sports palace is rented for it, where about 2 thousand people are invited. These are representatives of various parties, confessions, social activists, officials, parliamentarians of various levels, deputies of the ZSO, and so on. The latter, after the end of the speech of the first person, will have to hastily return to the building of the Legislative Assembly in order to vote for the report and listen to the “other” questions in the usual atmosphere. The press service of the governor did not explain to the agency why the head of the region and his team did not like the building of the ZSO, where all his predecessors reported on their work. Meanwhile, such a tendency, literally, “to splurge in a difficult situation,” caused dissatisfaction with some representatives of the political elite.
The Great Hall of the ZSO is capable of accommodating not only the composition of deputies, but also the heads of municipalities, ministers and all those who were invited to the governor’s address, and the protection of the ZSO is able to ensure security, they say in parliament.
According to Mukhometyarova, deputies judge the governor’s activities not by this beautiful picture, but by his work. Other representatives of the ZSO for the most part refuse to comment on this matter, although many admit that the timing of tomorrow’s meeting is not very convenient: you need to arrive at Yunost by 11:00, then get to the ZSO by 13:00 to vote for the first question and hear 37 more from the agenda.
“And what is wrong? The governor is the most public person in the region after the president. He has something to talk about, there are breakthrough projects. He will report not only to the deputies, but also to all voters. The event will be attended by about 2 thousand people representing all categories of the population. I like this new, public format,” Alexander Motovilov supported the Texler team from United Russia.
It is impossible to rent the Yunost Sports Palace for a mass event for several hours. The site is leased for a day, for 400 thousand rubles. To this we should add lighting, sound equipment, production of stands and commercials dedicated to the achievements of the Chelyabinsk region.
“They covered everything with carpet, set up a stage, video panels, draped. They spent money from the accounts of the ITV and the agency for international cooperation. To hide the scale, ”said one of the interlocutors of the publication in political circles. According to another source, money for such purposes is allocated through the department manager, but he did not name a specific amount. Yunost itself, one of the deputies claims, could have been provided for the announcement of the message free of charge, “taking into account the social significance of the event.”
Recall that Alexey Teksler announced his last “message” on May 25, 2021 in the “Arkaim” hall (accommodates up to 750 people) in the “World Trade Center” (according to the official website, an hour of rent costs 15 thousand rubles, a day – 100 thousand rubles). First, the audience was shown a 4-minute video about the region and its successes, and the opening speech of the then speaker of the ZSO, Vladimir Myakush, lasted about two minutes. Alexei Teksler spoke in the spotlight for about 50 minutes, after which Myakush suggested that the audience move to the meeting room of the ZSO.
The event was broadcast by the OTV channel and on the website of the Legislative Assembly. Judging by the video, there were no questions from the audience. In other words, nothing would have changed for the invitees if they had watched the broadcast of the “message” in the same silent manner on TV.
Old-timers of the South Ural politicians note that before Texler, all governors reported on their activities only in the ZSO building. The current head of the region followed this tradition only once – in 2019, when he was still in the status of acting. In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the report was heard online. What is the reason for the transition to the “new format” from 2021, the government of the Chelyabinsk region did not explain the editors.
Such an attitude does not add trust to the authorities, either among the public or among the deputies. So, the Chelyabinsk deputy Elena Vakhtina said that she was not going to the event.
Deciphering “breakthrough projects”, the head of the consulting company “KEMP” Yakov Gurevich believes that mistakes in the field of road construction in Chelyabinsk caused the greatest damage to the budget. So, in addition to Komsomolsky Prospekt, there was an error during the reconstruction of the Trinity Bridge.
Another claim of the public to the work of the Texler team concerns the environment. This is the destruction of greenery in the name of the construction of roads, residential and commercial facilities, as well as the “hanging” issue of the landfill in Poletaevo – on a site dangerous from the point of view of the wind rose, in the water protection zone of the drinking source of Chelyabinsk.
“It never occurred to anyone to take garbage from all the periphery to the center of a two-million-strong agglomeration. Therefore, reports of successes in the fight for the environment do not please us at all,” environmentalists state.