A month and a half before the local elections, the leadership of the Bihor County Council presented an assessment of the mandate that began in the fall of 2020, in a press conference in which together with the president Ilie Bolojan and the vice-presidents Mircea Mălan and Călin Gal were representatives of subordinate departments.
“If I were to characterize this mandate, I would say that it was an administration that guided the County Council in the service of the Bihorenes, an administration for development and an administration of partnerships”, said Ilie Bolojan. President CJ Bihor recalled that “in the first months of his mandate, we took totally unpopular measures”, reducing the number of employees by half. “It was found that the activity did not collapse, on the contrary, it went in a normal direction”, said Bolojan, adding that, through layoffs and the reduction of expenses, an economy of 6 million euros was achieved in one year, money that has were directed towards investments, in the interest of the Bihoreans.
Other measures taken: the introduction, for the first time, of performance indicators for town halls, the cleaning regulation imposed at the county level, or the project to equip libraries in municipalities and cities with books. Also, all the projects initiated in the previous mandate were continued and completed.
Regarding the development of the county, the president of the CJ mentioned that if in 2019 the investment budget was 26% of the total, in 2023 it was 77%. Among the mentioned investments are: the modernization of the airport (over 70 million euros invested last year alone), the construction of a new road network (over 65 km in the works), the construction of the network of industrial parks, support for the construction of communal roads, etc.
In order to attract the necessary funds for the realization of the investments, CJ Bihor made a series of partnerships, the most important being those concluded with Oradea City Hall, respectively the National Road Infrastructure Administration Company (CNAIR), whose effects “were massive”. Thus, based on the partnership with the municipality of Oradea, projects such as: the Metropolitan Road Ring (17 km of road under construction), the future Hospital for Infectious Diseases on Vlădeasa street, the network of passages from the exits of the city, flights from the airport, the Center Cultural Multifunctional etc. Also, based on the partnership with CNAIR, a part of the belts, the future Arad-Oradea express road, the network of passages, the widening of the Oradea exits to four lanes are being built. Other partnerships were concluded with the University of Oradea (for new student dormitories, the Science and Technology Park, the campus for dual education), with CFR (the tram-train network), with the county town halls (for the introduction of gas networks), etc.
Vice President Mircea Mălan mentioned the cleaning program at the county level, the implementation of the Integrated Waste Management System (collection in 6 fractions at the level of cities and 5 fractions in communes), the construction of bulky waste storage centers in the county and projects in protected natural areas.
“I had two great enemies: time and money. Time was short, and money had to be found. We took on a poor development budget, with only 25% for investment, the rest for operation. Now the budget is 6 times bigger, and the one for development 16 times. This year we have 85% of the budget for development, 15% being operating expenses. We have the smallest organizational chart in the country, but we have the largest development budget among the county councils in the country”, said vice-president Călin Gal, who specified that the most important thing in this mandate was the correct management of funds.
