The mayor of Split comments on his work thus far, his plans for the future and the highly anticipated Žnjan project.
Split was more alive than ever yesterday as tens of thousands of citizens flocked to the Riva to mark the City Day and the Sveti Duje celebration. In the midst of locals and foreigners, Split Mayor Andro Krstulovic Opara, who spent all of yesterday among his fellow citizens, found the time to answer some very pertinent questions about Split today and the future of the Dalmatian capital, reports Dalmacija Danas on May 8, 2018.
Though the mayor is delighted with this year’s Sveti Duje celebration, he believes that Split still has a long way to go, with much more work to be done.
“People can talk about how my team and I are doing, but we are actually working on a simple principle – the term. That is how I have done most of the work in my life, and that is how I am running the city. I want a person I can trust, but I control it and keep watching the schedule. I also requested a schedule and deadlines at the Prime Minister’s session. By the end of the month, we hope to have a plan for every point in Split, and we will help other cities, so that the plan names the person in a particular ministry, as well as the appropriate name in our administration, so all projects are assigned,” said Krstulović Opara.
Opara was then asked what he thought of the comments that Žnjan wasn’t in function, and if he thinks citizens would go there to swim this summer.
“Let’s put it this way – people did not come to Žnjan to drink coffee or to have their children bathed in their feces. There will no longer be fecal matter, the bars will no longer be in the sea, and we will have these catering objects as a temporary solution to achieve the oasis we want. And, more importantly, I am not the only one that wants this, but the citizens do as well, which was found from the surveys we invited them to take to better their quality of life. That was the data we started with, and I must say it was great, very moving. With serious health problems, the president of the architectural jury, Ivanišević, and I, who had just come out of the hospital, were so pleased because we saw that all 12 contestants carefully read what the citizens wanted. They want greenery, cycling trails and promenades, culture and recreation. Do you know where cafe bars were placed on the list? Somewhere at the bottom; the tenth of the eleventh desire of citizens,” added Opara.
June 14 will mark one year since the beginning of the Split mayor’s mandate. Was he able to accomplish everything he had hoped in his first year?
“A big part. I was not able to complete the restructuring of Banovina, and I believe that we will finish it by the end of the year. You know that we have completely redesigned the organization, 18 departments were condensed to 12, at the beginning of the mandate I dismissed two heads, and it turned out to be good that we did because we got great people who took advantage of the opportunity. I believe that we will start building a faster, more efficient, and citizen-friendly management,” Opara said and added that his desire is for Split to become a world destination for tourists at all times of the year, not only during Ultra.
“A third of the audience at the Simple Minds concert were tourists. That’s what we want, and we want to make Sveti Duje an internationally recognizable event. People want to come to our city now, not only during Ultra, but that is happening already,” concluded the mayor.
