In TASS special project Top Officials, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin speaks about the view from his office window, the food embargo, car park prices and migrants.
- This view from the window of your office is impressive, indeed: the whole center of Moscow at a glance. Even the Kremlin, which is just a mile away, can be looked down at.
- Looking down in general is very wrong, whoever may be in front of you. Doing one’s job right is a far more useful pastime. In all respects…
True, the view of the city is really beautiful, but the reason for choosing this particular office was different, of course. The building in Voznesensky Pereulok for the government of Moscow was put up back in the second half of the 1990s. However, for some time the rooms here were leased to various businesses. Several years ago the Mayor’s Office had an idea of building a new residence for itself in the Moscow City business compound. The project was eventually dropped and the selected site sold. We decided to have our head office next to the historical mansion at Tverskaya Street 13 to keep all of our divisions at once place. The business people who had been using the office where asked to move elsewhere.
- You’ve been Moscow’s Mayor for four years now. I reckon this is your personal record of work at the same place and in the same position.
- I was the speaker of the Khanty-Mansi District’s legislature a little bit longer — from 1994 through 2000. But you are right in a sense. Moscow is a special case. And for a city like Moscow four years is a very short period of time. All projects have a different scale and dimension. Translating them into reality within tight deadlines is just impossible. It takes at least five to seven years to have a sensible result.
- And still, the time since the moment you took office is apparently quite enough to say where you have been successful and where not?
- I should tell you that on all priority tracks that we had declared we have achieved certain results, but it is surely too early to draw a bottom line. Let may say once again. These are very large-scale projects. There is practically no area where we have made no progress. From housing construction to reforming education and health care. The pace of progress is high everywhere. I would even say it is the highest possible.
- But there is surely something that is number one priority for you?
- You know, the city is like a living organism. Remember: it is home to twelve million locals and no less than three million guests permanently present within its limits. As a result you get a bundle of problems, expectations and wishes that do not let you say: “OK, this problem is number one, while everything else can wait.” For instance, if we decide to focus all of our efforts on transport, somebody will surely say: “Listen, there is no vacancy for my kid in the local pre-school center, and I couldn’t care less about this traffic jams problem of yours...” And somebody else would possibly say: “My health is failing, so I believe that nothing is more important that having good municipal outpatient clinics with competent staff.” And businesses have their own requirements. To thrive and grow they need a friendly environment…
The list can be prolonged indefinitely. In Moscow you can’t afford to dedicate yourself entirely to a single task. You’ve got to identify the key projects and to push ahead with all of them. That’s what makes my job so complex and so thrilling.
Projects vary, while their ideology is the same – making the city a convenient and comfortable place to live for its residents and guests. Tasks should not be in conflict with each other; they are to complement each other. And that’s quite a challenge! As I’ve already said, very often we encounter conflicting expectations, wishes and opinions. To take such basic things as putting and keeping in order each yard locked among several apartment buildings. It might seem this is not a problem at all, but don’t forget that such plots of land in the whole of Moscow number 20,000, or possibly more. Taking care of them requires much time and effort. Besides, in each such tiny public garden there are benches where our senior citizens are fond of having a long afternoon chat away from the hustle and bustle of a big city.
Young women with small children would love to have a nice playground with sandboxes, swing sets and merry-go-rounds, while people need a sports ground for ball games. The neighbors’ interests aren’t always the same. So there has to be a project to everybody’s liking that would make one and all say: “Yes, we do like it.” The same is true on the city scale. Some are going to put up a huge office building, while others are for another residential compound, and everybody wants to have a nice view from the window. Reconciling the projects is a no easy task at all, but…
- It turns out that you start your mornings with inspecting the yards?
- All of our projects are built into larger city programs. All priorities have their own budgets, and progress on each project is reviewed systematically. I chair such process meetings myself.
For instance, we may begin a Monday with a discussion of how best to develop commuter transport and we may have to get back to various aspects of this issue several times during the week. On Tuesday, the Moscow’s government meets in session to consider the whole package of problems. The theme of construction enjoys unflagging attention. I am regularly present at the hearings of the urban and land development commission, which considers the largest and most complex projects. Other meetings may be devoted to health care, education and culture. Each set of tasks has its own timetable.
When I see that some extra issues arise, we meet in session more often. Sometimes twice a week. If we manage to get the project underway and it does not require daily intervention, it appears on my business schedule once in two or three weeks. But all of the programs are under control and the people responsible never forget: we will get back to that issue again and again. All of our plans will be discussed thoroughly and each person responsible will have to present a detailed account. This is the sole way of keeping the projects going the way they should. True, lot depends on those who actually work in the field, but if the manager fails to keep it under continued control, the project will either die down or go wrong to produce an effect very different from the originally conceived one.
- Does the force majeure factor make itself felt often?
- There is no way of getting away from it altogether. It’s impossible to foresee everything in advance. But systemic work allows for minimizing the effects of emergencies. We do our best to ensure we have as few unpleasant surprises as possible. When I am asked what my idea of fighting the crisis is, I always say: it is confined to retaining all of the programs we have launched, ensuring their logistics and financing and taking proper administrative measures and ensuring steady progress.
These are the basics of success. No emergency campaigns and feverish attempts to patch holes, but steady, systemic work. Imagine we have turned out backs on infrastructure development to focus on something else. The whole investment activity in the city will be ruined. Push ahead steadily with the plans you have identified, and there will be far fewer emergencies.
- And what if an emergency has occurred after all? What is the sequence of steps you follow?
All of my deputies, ministers of the Moscow government and the heads of key departments have a hot line to me. All of them have my mobile phone number and they feel free to call any time. No problems about that.
- When was it you got the latest such emergency call?
- Just recently. Remember the powerful thundershower, when some areas of Moscow got a month’s rain over just several hours? It was an emergency. Some roads, street underpasses and tunnels were flooded. And before that there was a household gas explosion in a café.
- Do you always hurry to the emergency site yourself?
- I do, if casualties are heavy and there is a potential risk of major systemic disruptions.
About slashed investment, Chinese metro, love for art, and the food embargo
About Moscow’s new-acquired lands, ambulances, medics, and the cost that’s worth the price
About migrants, job patents, unemployment, redundant civil servants and salary cuts
About privileges, Night Wolves, renaming of streets and monument to Prince Vladimir
- The current crisis, too, is a force majeure event in a sense. In fact, we’ve discussed that. When four years ago you took the Moscow mayor’s seat, the state of affairs in the economy was different…
- Incidentally, I got my present job amid the crisis. The effects of the 2008 economic slump were felt rather strongly. And there were far more panic and painful reactions than there are today. We tend to forget the recent past, but the end of the last decade was a no easy period at all. The Russian government worked round the clock to address the arising problems. The critical situation is a replica of the previous one in a sense, but we already have many ready-made solutions and can follow the well-trodden path. But in some respects this crisis is different from the previous ones. It has certain specifics.
- For instance?
- We are confronted with painstaking attempts to block our access to foreign investment. We are being barred from financial markets and loans. We have to rely on our own resources (material, administrative and technological) to a far greater extent. That’s the main difference. It is a problem and an advantage at the same time: the circumstances force us to develop our own industries, innovations, technologies and the banking businesses. This is an advantage.
- In theory, yes. But in practice it will not be until after several years that the seeds you’ve sown will start to germinate.
- The situation is not that bad at all. Remember last year’s tensions, when it seemed to some that after the sanctions we will have a tremendous shortage of commodities. Nothing of the sort happened. True, there was a surge in prices, but to a greater extent it resulted from fluctuations in the exchange rate of the ruble. There was no disruption in food supply. The supermarket shelves have never got empty.
- But you will surely agree that the variety of goods on offer is far worse. This is a fact of life.
- We should understand well enough what we are talking about. The supply of essentials remained intact. True, imported delicacies are fewer, but I do not think that this situation will last long.
- Even though the counter-embargo against the EU countries has been prolonged?
- A market economy abhors no vacuum. Where there was Switzerland we now have Argentina, Italy’s niche has gone to Turkey. New import flows have been gradually replacing the previous ones. True, some products have no worthy substitutes, but will you tell me: For how long have we been such great connoisseurs of French cheeses and frog legs?
- Early this year there emerged expectations of great problems in public catering. Some analysts forecast a third of Moscow’s cafes and restaurants would have to go out of business. Due to a drop in clientele and disruptions in food supplies…
- Let’s wait a little bit more. We’ve seen nothing of the sort so far. Take the open air summer cafes. The season is well underway, and there are no few of them than before. Possibly, the fears were prompted by the pessimistic expectations of the end of last year and early this year. In reality, we have seen no drastic slump either in retail trade or on public catering. True, the situation looked alarming in January and February. No denying that. But the way I see it, things are getting better slowly but surely.
- But the shop windows along Tverskaya Street are brimming with TO LET ads.
- Yes, some of the rented spaces have gone vacant. Not because there are no clients eager to rent a room to open a retail outlet or a cafe, but because the property owners have developed the habit of charging high-sky prices. Pegged to foreign currencies. I believe that taxation should be tuned up in a way that would force the real estate owners who overcharge prices or keep rooms vacant to carry a heavier financial burden. This will make them stop to think how reasonable their financial expectations are. Business people will never lose interest in renting offices in Tverskaya Street. Never ever. That means the current rates are too high. There aren’t fewer businesses these days. Office and retail trade spaces are vacant through the fault of the owners, who refuse to lower rates in accordance with the situation. There where property owners have not lost common sense, free space is hard to come by.
- A couple of years ago you said that Moscow had entered the list of the world’s top five cities from the standpoint of investment and was prepared to contest a place in the top three.
- Are you telling me that during the crisis it may have to leave the top of the list? I doubt that. We remain among the leaders. From the standpoint of capital investment Moscow’s market remains vast and attractive. By real estate investment development dynamics we have taken the world’s second place after Beijing. This finding by PriceWaterhouseCoopers dates back to 2013. Last year’s parameters are still better.
- But the specialists are saying the market is stalled, with no new deals concluded at all. There was nothing of the kind during the previous crises of 1998 or 2008.
- I have different estimates to rely on. After a certain lull in the first half of the year the market is witnessing an upturn. Great turbulence was observed only at the end of 2014. Investment dynamics has remained positive by and large. For the first time over a long period we commissioned nine million square meters of real estate. That’s quite an achievement.
- But will there be sufficient demand for this vast floor space? What if it turns into investors’ bad assets? And what will happen to the prices of housing? These are generally believed to be grossly overstated. Isn’t it time for their downward revision?
- The forecasts of realtors and investors vary. In any case the market will have the final say. The market is the main regulator. Surely, nobody needs illiquid assets. That’s obvious. At this point I can say that Moscow in 2013 was the world’s number one by the amount of office space and city roads built. It was also one of the world’s leaders as to the commissioning of retail trade facilities. I hope that we shall see approximately the same parameters this year. In 2016 the amount will go down, I am afraid, there will be less nearly-finished projects, but we have accumulated a significant inertia of capital investment, which is approximately the same as the one we saw in 2014 and surely not worse than the level of 2013. In a word, no steep fall should occur. We will remain among the world’s leading capitals by the pace of commissioning real estate, developing urban infrastructures, roads and the metro.
- But some sacrifices will have to be made after all. How do you go about the business of negotiations with investors and contractors these days? What arguments do you resort to in a bid to persuade them?
- You know, business people are still eager to work with Moscow. They are looking for contracts here. We keep investing into the metro and roads and railways, the engineering infrastructures and social facilities… We have scrutinized our budget spending to have reduced it by seven percent as compared with last year. These funds remain blocked for a while. I believe that some of them will leave the budget. We’ve done thorough auditing to find out that we can do away without them well enough. But the main projects have been preserved.
- At the end of last year there were media rumors that in the wake of the ruble’s slump the Chinese decided against building the metro line in Moscow’s newly-acquired southwestern territories, commonly referred to as New Moscow. Deputy Mayor Marat Khusnullin has confirmed that the “project has been paused somewhat.”
- "Paused," mind you, and not closed down altogether. We are going ahead with proactive work with our Chinese partners. They still remain undecided about the likely contract and the preferable investment scheme to be used. I believe that in a month or two will summarize and declare the preliminary results. True, the process has been proceeding not very easily; to an extent, due to the rouble’s rate. But the Chinese still look greatly interested in the project.
We will go on building the metro line in our new territories no matter what, regardless of whether the Chinese will join in or not. They would like to participate in the project not because they are such great enthusiasts or wish to give us a nice gift. They are about to invest heavily. The Chinese are pragmatic people and they won’t be doing anything for gratis. They wish to estimate the likely benefits of their participation first. They wish to understand what their interest in this project is… That’s not charity. It’s business.
If you take a look at the structure of the city budget, you will see that the investment component is still there. We built it up over years and have managed to keep it at the achieved level, although Moscow’s budget in recent years was not growing as fast as it used to. To maintain the original scale of investment the costs should be optimized day in day out. This year’s financing of metro construction projects is even greater than it was last year.
By and large the question is not about money but about the scale of work, which Russia will find rather hard to cope on its own. There are not enough builders, tunnel workers, surveyors, technicians, designers, engineers and other specialists such construction projects require. That’s a major brake on construction work. The lack of prepared territories for stations and the reclamation of land once sold up to commercial entities. That’s an extra problem. Nevertheless, we have been working at a dozen sites. I do foresee that some lagging behind the original tight schedule may occur. It’s going to be a great construction project, and it is hard to break down building operations by the hour. Globally the strategy is not changing. Possibly, some stations will open not in 2015, but next year, but we will surely accomplish everything that we have set to ourselves.
- Better sooner than later… Talking about the roads, the tunnel linking the Alabian Street and Baltiiskaya Street under one of Moscow’s busiest traffic arteries — the Leningradsky Avenue — had to be repeatedly closed to traffic. It got flooded, the building company went bankrupt… In the end the costs have beaten all records. Channel Tunnel was less costly.
- You’ve got to understand that we are not laying a highway across a flat plain, where asphalt layers can race each other against the clock. Inside the city we have to rearrange the layout of streets and complex supply links, such as water mains, gas pipelines, sewage canals, electric cables and communication lines… We spend time not so much on building work proper, but on replacing, relocating and re-assembling this multi-tier cake. Any new road in a modern city is a combination of the most complicated engineering facilities. Each time we have a pile of problems to address. The tunnel you mentioned was just one of the examples of the challenges we have to deal with. Both objective and subjective ones.
Nevertheless, we stick to the selected pace, and I hope that we will manage to maintain it for another two or three years.
- But the problem of traffic jams is still on the agenda. The Dutch manufacturer of GPS navigators, TomTom, has estimated that in 2013 the average Muscovite spent an average of 127 hours in traffic jams, in other words, wasted nearly five days and nights on this absolutely senseless pastime. Will this knot be ever undone?
- We are doing this step by step. But there are no simple solutions at hand. Neither a sword nor a magic wand will help. Scrupulous work must proceed steadily along different lines: the development of the metro network, the dedicated lanes for public transport vehicles, the elimination of bottlenecks, pay carparks, strict administration on the roads, an intellectual transport system and traffic lights control… Each of the components makes its own contribution. Then there occurs a synergetic effect and people suddenly come to realize: “Look! This crossroads was a hopeless dead end just recently. Now the traffic is flowing smoothly. And the speed has grown. Something is changing for the better!”
- For example? Can you point to a specific place?
- I guess that everybody is familiar with the Boulevard Ring. Just several years ago double parking, cars left on the pavements and endless traffic jams were an everyday occurrence. Traffic there has now improved dramatically. There are no situations in which cars do not move at all. The Boulevard Ring road is drivable even during rush hours.
Or the Korovino road. Vehicles entering the city in the morning had to stop at each traffic lights as soon as they entered Moscow across the MKAD belt highway, forming a long traffic jam. In the evening the same occurred on the opposite side of the road. The operation of the traffic lights has been readjusted and synchronized. Those driving towards the city center can easily catch the “green wave.”
The Varshavskoye highway is now different after a fundamental upgrade. Tunnels have opened at the intersection of the Kashirskoye highway and the Andropov and Proletarsky avenues. New flyovers have been built at some critical points of the MKAD belt highway.
The situation is far from ideal, but it is a good sign the speed of traffic is not falling but, on the contrary, growing steadily on many roads, including those in the city center, although there are far more cars than before.
- Has the idea of bus-only lanes worked?
- As you may remember, it sparked a lively debate three years ago. Its critics claimed that busses using dedicated lanes were few and rare. Let’s allow car drivers use the lanes again they argued. That was a possibility. But, as a rule the right lane is taken up by parked cars, while busses have to venture into the second and third lanes, thereby causing extra traffic problems. Of course, many people preferred to spend time in traffic jams at the wheel of their own cars, and not on a crowded bus. We came up with an alternative: you may keep trying stubbornly to get to your destination by car-crammed roads or take a fast bus ride, using a dedicated lane. The number of commuters who opted for public transport since the project was launched has been up several-fold. In daily terms that’s an equivalent of over a million people. Fortunately, Moscow, once the world champion by the length of traffic jams and the time wasted in them, has moved from first to fourth place, below Mexico City, Istanbul and Rio de Janeiro.
- This is not the case in which Moscow would like to be at the top of the podium, isn’t it?
- By all means. The findings I am talking about are not ours. It’s the estimate of the TomTom company you’ve already mentioned. One of the most authoritative of all. TomTom keeps an eye on the world’s 200 largest cities to publish its findings every year. Before, we had been firmly on the very top for many years.
- Have pay car parks helped ease the congestion problem in any way?
Surely. No one in the world has been able to come up with anything better so far. The strategy of addressing the traffic jams issue is two-fold. Public transport development is one, and the costs of using a private vehicle in the city is the other. The higher the cost of driving your own car, the greater the incentive to using public transport. If the latter is getting better available, comfortable and faster, there appears an extra argument in favor.
- But then it would be logical to charge a fee for entering the city’s center. At a certain point you considered that possibility only to eventually change your mind…
- We’ve studied the experience of our foreign counterparts who had to confront that challenge earlier than us. Most European cities have refrained from imposing such restrictions on motorists. For instance, Berlin, with its huge car fleet, manages to maintain traffic at a decent level, even in the very center.
Only two European capitals have established congestion charge zones – Stockholm and London. Most cities try to do without that, although Moscow’s dimensions are far greater than those of most other cities. The agglomeration has a population and work force of twenty million. The transport flows are enormous! But for the time being we have not used all of the opportunities available to us. We should keep working along the same lines. We see positive dynamics. I hope we shall be able to do without any radical measures and chose a less painful solution. Some large Asian megapolises, such as Singapore, Shanghai and Beijing, have their own specific traits. The rules there are far harsher. Everything is regulated very strictly. There may be restrictions on car purchases. Cars registered elsewhere may not be allowed to enter this or that region, the way it is done in Beijing. There are some other strict measures, although in Asia the number of cars per capita is far lower than in it is Moscow. Yet the traffic there is very tight…
I do hope that this positive trend that has developed in our city will last.
- Where does the car park fee go? And how much money is being collected in this way?
- In the second half of 2013 – 263 million rubles (an equivalent of $5 million), and in 2014, 1.186 billion rubles ($23 million). Nearly one and a half billion roubles ($30 million all in all). I’ve heard quite a few speculations about how the money is spent. Take it from me: all revenues to the last ruble go to a special budget account to be handed over to the bodies of local self-government in those areas where the pay car parks are. There the money is spent on the capital repairs of apartment buildings, the improvement of amenities and surrounding territories and the roads… More than five hundred such facilities have been identified. A certain sum remains in the reserve. We had made a decision from the outset all proceeds will be spent on the infrastructures of the districts where the fee is charged.
- Don’t you think that charging the parking fee during night time and on Saturdays is not very humane? In the center of the city, in the first place? In most European cities car parks are free in the evenings and on weekends to let people take their time in the restaurants, theaters and museums…
- Solutions may vary but everybody should understand: Moscow’s transport problems are far greater than those found in any European city. The area that the streets and roads take up is far smaller than in the Old World. And we are lagging far behind by the number of parking slots, including those available on the outskirts and in the city center. Most people have to leave their cars in the yards or on nearby streets. In the evenings the local residents’ cars fill every single space available. After all, they have to leave the car for the night in some place. That’s one reason. Another is Moscow is a very active city. It might seem that Saturday is a day off, but Saturday traffic is busier than on any other day of the week. Far fewer people use public transport, and far more ride about in their own cars. Even more than on weekdays. Many go to the city center for family outings and to do shopping.
Please, remember that Moscow is a northern city. In wintertime we need some time to clear the streets of the snow. Before we introduced the pay car park zone, the road services were unable to do anything about the cars parked along the pavements. You surely remember the chaos in the center in those days: snow heaps, chaos, no chance to park a car properly according to the rules, or an opportunity to remove the snow. Now we at least have a chance to clear the streets during night-time and to put the parking slots in order by the morning. There emerges another big problem, if we make all car parks free of charge on weekdays and at night-time.
It’s all very simple: the pay car parks were introduced not to make money. Our purpose is to ease the strain on the neighborhoods and the intensity of traffic.
Just recently taxicab drivers tried to steer clear of the city center by all means. They eagerly service passengers going to the railway stations and the airports, but did not dare venture inside the Garden Ring, because the risk of being trapped in a jam for hours was more than guaranteed. Many cabbies say outright: “Before we stayed out of the center for fear of wasting a whole day there.” And what do we see today? The number of licensed taxicabs has been up from seven thousand, eight thousand at the most, to fifty thousand. A yellow taxicab in the city center can be seen everywhere. Why? The services available in the Internet have played a certain role, that is true, and ordering a taxi is now very easy, but this new resource would have never worked, had the time to be spent on each ride remained as unpredictable as before. It’s like a chain reaction. Once it is so easy to go to the center of the city in a taxi, what’s the reason then of using a private car? Each family car left at home makes the traffic calmer.
- And the risk of getting in trouble with the car removal services is smaller…
- I agree that car removal is an unpleasant procedure, but it is necessary, because nobody will otherwise agree to pay for parking a car. People will start leaving their vehicles wherever they wish, the way it was done before. On the road, on the dedicated bus lanes… But people’s mentality is changing. They begin to look differently at the situation that would have remained unnoticed yesterday. I believe that we should not be going to extremes. The strategy has been chosen. We should move onwards. True, many things are unpopular, but they yield results by and large.
- And what is to be done about the ‘fig leafs’ (so to say) that some drivers stick to their cars’ license plates? For some reason this trick is often used by the drivers of office limousines parked near various ministries and agencies. Or there is this newly-invented ploy of leaving the car’s boot open, as if unintentionally. The license plate cannot be seen, so the car park fee is dodged…
- There is a staff of special inspectors, who patrol the assigned territory on foot to keep an eye on the most resourceful drivers, who park their cars in violation of the rules. These inspectors are on the staff of the Moscow car park inspectorate, and they have the right to remove the sheets of paper or other items that may be left casually or intentionally to cover the license plates. Punishing the responsible is one of their competences. That’s one thing. The other is all cars with unintelligible license plates are the removal service’s number one targets. We have arrested more than 6,000 such vehicles and taken them to custody since the beginning of this year. I believe that those trying to hide their cars’ license plates from cameras will be far fewer soon. It’s not worth the effort, you know. The tow truck operator has no idea what kind of car is in front of him, and why the driver has masked or covered the license plate. What if there is a terrorist or a gangster hiding inside? Or, say, it may turn out the car has been stolen. The car park inspectorate pays attention to such “anonymous” vehicles first and foremost.
- Several years ago a lot was being said and written about the need for easing the strain on the city center. There were plans for moving most of the government offices, services and agencies outside the MKAD circular road. Some to a community called Kommunarka, and others to Arkhangelskoye. But then the affair faded into the background to drop out of sight somehow altogether. Is it the crisis to blame?
- The issue is still on the agenda. It’s not about the specific new locality where this or that body of power may be moved, but about the urban construction strategy of the future. The priorities have changed. We’ve begun to systematically reduce the amount of office and retail trade facilities being built in the city center, while giving the green light to those who are eager to build a residential compound or a hotel. New jobs, offices, business centers and technoparks will be moved to the periphery… Incidentally, the transport situation has begun to change for the better. As I have already said, Moscow takes number one place in the world by the rate of commissioning new office space, but we have been building it along the city’s perimeter border. Bedroom community dwellers don’t have to go to the city center each morning. In the very same New Moscow we have created 80,000 jobs. While its population now is a little over 300,000. In that sense we have a surplus, which is very important.
You’ve mentioned the Kommunarka community. The layout design is about to be completed there. I hope it will be adopted by the end of the summer and construction work will begin. The upgrade of the Kaluga road is in full swing and urban infrastructures are being created. This is necessary for drawing investment. And as for the Rublyovo-Arkhangelskoye area, the basic urban construction decisions have been made there by and large. A few finishing touches are still to be put.
- As far as I understand, the idea of moving Moscow’s perimeter border as far as the Kaluga Region does not look premature to you, does it?
- This vast territory is absolutely essential for the city’s development and for drawing investment. In New Moscow we’ve fast-tracked the construction of logistics centers, a farming cluster, industrial facilities, offices and housing. The first metro line – to Salaryevo – will be laid there this year. Design work is in progress on another line. We are laying lateral links between the Kaluga and Kiev automobile roads. One opened to traffic last year, and two more will begin to be built this year.
I have no regrets that at a certain point we made a decision to expand the city limits. This territory will keep feeding Moscow for a while, because it will be an area of not so much bedroom communities as business clusters.
- And you have not the slightest shade of doubt about the need for the health care reform, do you? Had you been prepared that at a certain stage it would draw so much criticism?
- In fact, the reform has been afoot for many years. It began with the adoption of the current law on mandatory medical insurance. The law has been in operation since 2010. Over the years the health service has been pro-actively adjusting itself to the new conditions, to transition from budget-financed operation to insurance-based medicine. True, any reform is painful. It takes people some time to realize its end goals. Those inside the industry sometimes rise in revolt. But there is no other solution. We are obliged to raise medics’ salaries. The main spending is to be targeted to medical personnel, and not the administrative one. There was no chance of leaving intact the Soviet system, where there was a standard budget for all and the number of medical doctors per patient in neighboring outpatient clinics might vary by a factor of three or four. The system was disproportionate, while the effectiveness of spending remained low.
Health care is considered the most complex social service of the world over. The countries that have managed to create a perfect model to everybody’s liking are few, if any. Nevertheless, I believe that the first positive results are already in sight. The availability of outpatient clinics and doctors’ services have improved several times in contrast to what there was a couple of years ago. The time spent on waiting for the day to visit a medical specialist has reduced considerably. The rate of mortality in hospitals – maternal, infant and that related to a number of diseases — has been down, although there has been no decline in the number of surgeries performed. There were speculations we have slashed the amount of ambulance services and their availability has declined. Nothing of the sort. Even an extra option has been introduced. For instance, now it is possible to request a fast medical service, when the patient needs urgent assistance not within a matter of minutes, but, say within hours. If the patient has caught a cold or runs a temperature and so on and so forth. With the introduction of the fast medical service the amount of visits to patients at home has not reduced, but increased by 20 percent in contrast to 2010.
- Once we have mentioned the reforms, it’s worth taking a look at education. What’s the reason behind the changes in the status of specialized schools and what are the benefits of pooling several schools into large conglomerates?
- The issue should be considered comprehensively. It would be very wrong to take certain components out of the general context and try to pass a universal verdict on this basis. Secondary education in Moscow has always been better than in other regions. But those high standards were found mostly in several dozen elite educational establishments, while all others were far behind the declared level. In some cases this shortfall was vast, indeed. The financing of gymnasiums and lyceums exceeded that of ordinary Moscow schools several times. Most school students in Moscow were deprived of the expected quality of instruction. We have merged schools to create large educational centers. Each of them has several branches offering advanced instruction in exact sciences, natural sciences and the humanities. The teachers are hired accordingly. Spending on office personnel has been slashed, while the salaries of teachers have doubled. It was a painful process, too, which, possibly, is unavoidable in a situation like this.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. These days all schools enjoy the same level of financing and any resident of Moscow has the same opportunities for getting good education. The most prominent schools receive extra grants. It’s a bonus for exceptionally good work.
The results of the Unified State Exam have improved 100 percent since 2010, while control of the testing procedure has been tightened. In other words, the chances of Moscow schools’ graduates to be admitted to the country’s best universities have doubled, too.
Some may say you have overdone it with the Unified State Exam, that you play into your own hands. Ok, but then there is a different example. National school Olympiads indicate that the number of Muscovites among the prize winners has more than doubled since 2010. One in three award winners is a resident of Moscow. Can you imagine that?
The cost was worth the price. These days, parents can have their kids enrolled in school without even stepping outdoors. There is no more need for trying to get on friendly with the director or the head teacher, wasting time in lines, making campfires in the school yard to stay warm during the night waiting for the school to open to be the first to get in. Scenes like this were frequent just recently…
- You are going to slash the civil service staff of the Moscow Mayor’s Office by a third by July 1. At what expense? At whose expense, I mean?
- I hear many say: how come you’ve woken up all of a sudden to start firing people? Nothing of the kind. We’ve been conducting systemic work and doing everything according to a plan. Moscow has created a network of MFCs (multi-functional centers), which provide all government services virtually in no time and where there are no queues. A considerable share of services has been computerized, the structure streamlined and enlarged, and staff reduced. All civil servants enjoy the benefits of electronic document flows. Currently we are in the process of creating a cloud accounting system, which would save time and costs and systematize the knowledge about what is happening in this system.
A package of measures has been devised enabling us to revise the strength of the Mayor’s Office personnel. I don’t expect we have problems with job cuts. We are abolishing the positions of technical personnel – accountants, cashiers, administrators, human resources mangers…
- And those who will stay must’ve had their salaries cut?
- Wage cuts have affected the government of Moscow, the city legislature, the audit chamber and the election commission. But I must say that the remuneration of Moscow’s civil servants is the lowest in the country in contrast to the region’s average. Mind you, the lowest! So we’ve got to be very cautious in planning further reductions.
- The media have said a lot about the exodus of Central Asian migrants from Moscow and predicted problems in the housing and utilities sector and the building industry, which are heavily reliant on guest workers. What’s the situation now?
- True, many migrants were leaving at the beginning of the year in order to obtain an opportunity to enter Russia again. In general the flow has eased not very significantly. Now it has been considerably legalized, but that’s a different matter. Whereas two years ago 80 percent of labor migrants were illegal, now 80 percent of guest workers are legal ones.
- Don’t you think they have learned to hide much better?
- No. We’ve tightened our legislation a great deal. For instance, a citizen of Uzbekistan or Tajikistan may come to Moscow and stay here for three months without a visa as a tourist, or for other reason. After that labor relations have to be formalized and a license obtained. True, some people may keep hanging around here without accomplishing the formalities a little bit longer, but sooner or later they will face a migration patrol and be prohibited from entering Russia for years. Everybody is now aware of that and tries to have oneself legalized and registered. Moscow has created a special center for facilitating that procedure to the maximum extent. There were some crowds there at the beginning of the year, but now there are no long lines. A total of 220,000 work permits have been issued so far. The whole procedure takes two weeks at the most. This is not a very long time and we are determined to go on improving the conditions. This summer we will open another office at the migration center to eliminate all queues altogether and to let people obtain permits after one or two visits. We are interested in this, because we need to be sure about those who come to Moscow. Migrants undergo medical examination and obtain medical insurance. Before, many sick migrants were brought to hospitals without any medical documents and the city budget had to bear all the expenses. Before, migrants paid practically no taxes. These days the employment patents are a major source of revenue.
- Has the city seen any growth in unemployment with the advent of the crisis?
- It has. It was up by several factions of a percentage point. All the negative forecasts that had been made have not come true, fortunately. Unemployment had been at a level of 0.43%. Now it has been up by half of a percentage point. That’s nothing.
- You’ve been reproached for closing down street kiosks in the city center and for a crackdown on small traders.
- As you may remember, by 2010 the street kiosks had flooded Moscow. It is true that we then removed about ten thousand such outlets, but we created 400,000 new jobs in retail trade inside multi-storey centers. There are big, medium and small stores. Neither the retail businesses nor the customers have been harmed. All benefited.
Also, it should be remembered that street kiosks and small traders are not the same thing. As a rule the kiosks were owned by mediators, who controlled several hundred such outlets and subleased them to retailers at grossly overcharged prices. We believe that, firstly, there should be as many kiosks as the city’s people need; secondly, a system must be established to enable a businessman to lease the facilities directly from the city authorities. We are now removing mediators from street underpasses and are creating an experimental network of small retailers in the central district of Moscow as an experiment. The rooms are leased through electronic auctions straightly to business owners without any mediators or sublease rights. If the pattern works, we will use it elsewhere. The first auctions were successful: even though the crisis is hear there were 5-7 businesses contesting each lot.
- The real estate tax has begun to be computed differently starting from this year. What are the yields garnered by Moscow’s treasury?
- As far as the tax on the property of legal entities is concerned, we have been moving gradually, to spread the rate rises and the expansion of the list of facilities to which it applies over several years. We started with buildings having a total floor space of five thousand square meters and more. Now we have spread it to three thousand square meters. These are big buildings, too. But even inside such major buildings those who own 300 square meters and less, in other words, small and medium businesses, are still exempt from payments.
A fair real estate tax is a must. It is essential to developing the city. The previous system of taxation, pegged to their balance sheet value was inappropriate. The most expensive properties are inside old buildings in the city center, which according to the official papers aren’t worth a dime. As a result, their owners were paying nothing. In contrast to this, newly-built facilities on the outskirts had a very high book value. And those who had businesses registered outside Russia were contributing nothing to the city’s treasury, because they kept no balance sheets according to Russian accounting standards. But that’s nonsense!
Moscow used to have mammoth retail trade centers, which paid up to a million rubles of profit tax. That’s equal to nothing. The approach was not serious at all. Besides, chasing their owners in offshore zones is not our duty. Besides, the real estate tax does not concern business people by and large. It is a tax on property owners who lease their assets at market prices.
When we introduced this tax, and that was before the crisis, the prices of retail and office real estate to let went down, and not up. It turned out that keeping real estate vacant just in case was unprofitable. It had to be offered on the market to raise funds to pay the city and the tax service. This encourages development and not slows it down.
- And the ordinary people: what was their reaction to the new tax rates?
- It’s all the same. For instance, the dwellers of bedroom communities paid large taxes for their real estate, while the owners of luxury suites in the city center were not taxed at all. The pyramid has now been turned upside up. The system is reasonable and comprehensible. All benefits and discounts have been preserved. War veterans and veteran workers still pay no taxes on one real estate item of each kind. But only one. In the past, some modest retirees might own a dozen apartments in a central street, such as Tverskaya and pay nothing for any of them. You will agree this is not quite fair.
- Do you believe that the deprivatization of apartments may begin?
- This risk does exist in theory, but in practice we haven’t seen anything like it. The new real estate tax law establishes a transitional period of several years. Rates will be raised gradually.
- The number of those enjoying some kind of benefits is incredible, nearly three and a half million.
- That’s true, about half of the Muscovites are entitled to this or that discount off the utility bills. Two hundred thousand people with disabilities, 460,000 veteran workers, some other groups and their families…
Moscow is a city that provides better social protection to its people than any other. We spend about three hundred billion rubles on social security. It is one of the largest spending items of the city budget. We do not blow the benefits out of proportion, but we keep them at a proper level.
- Some budget money will have to be spent on resettling Night Wolves bikers. They still refuse to leave their headquarters in Mnevniki. The two buildings that in fact belong to the club’s leader, Alexander Zaldostanov (The Surgeon), are estimated at 130 million rubles. The plot of land taken up by the buildings is not identified and determining its real owner is a problem.
- Right. We have been asking them to move only to hear them say they would like us to leave them in peace and let them stay where they have their club. But in this area a parliamentary compound and a major metro junction are being built… Of course, we will do our best to compensate for the Night Wolves’ costs of moving elsewhere and to provide infrastructures, but for the budget it will be not as burdensome as it might seem at first sight.
- When is construction work on the site of a future parliamentary compound scheduled to begin?
- The dates do not depend on us. The urban construction decisions that are within Moscow’s realm of competence have been made. The project’s concept is being developed, and this is a responsibility of our counterparts at the presidential property department and both houses of the Federal Assembly.
- What will emerge in the place of today’s State Duma and the Federation Council?
- The city would like the buildings to be rebuilt into hotels, and not offices, but that’s the subject matter of a future dialogue. Moving both houses of parliament to a new place will require heavy funding. And, as far as I understand, the budget has no intention of giving cent for this project. The only possibility that is being contemplated is compensating for the investor’s costs.
- Is it the federal budget that you are talking about?
- Precisely. The city will not spend anything on this. We do have plans for developing infrastructures, but we will push ahead with them regardless of the parliamentary compound project. The roads and the third circular metro line will begin to be built anyway.
- Renaming the streets is surely a competence of the city authorities. Instead of two dead-end streets near Taganskaya Square there has appeared Vladimir Vysotsky Street. Thirty five years after the death of the Taganka Theater’s actor, poet, singer and songwriter he has been commemorated. But some still don’t like it. Why has his name been given to a tiny street, and not an avenue?
- Avenues’ names are always a problem. After all, there is an effective list of addresses. Whenever you ask local residents, most of them as a rule are strongly against renaming, because it involves re-registration, changes to passports and certificates and other documents. That’s a no easy affair at all.
As for the two dead-end alleys you’ve mentioned, nobody lives there. They are next to the theater. There is the theatre’s Stage Door and the Vladimir Vysotsky museum… All these factors were taken into account. If the public has some other ideas, they are welcome. We can consider them, too.
- Nobody has a home on any of Moscow’s bridges, either. So there will be no one to object. I am talking about the bridge where Boris Nemtsov was gunned down.
- You know, certain dates have to be observed for putting up memorial plaques. Some time has to pass after the person’s death. Such decisions must be calm and depoliticized…
Born November 8, 1959 in Luhansk, Ukraine. In 1982, Andrei Vandenko graduated from the Kiev National University of Taras Shevchenko specializing in journalism. Since 1989, he lives and works in Moscow. Vandenko has more than 20 years of experience in the interview genre. He was published in the major part of top Russian media outlets and is a winner of professional awards.