The association filed a criminal complaint regarding the Ústí zoning plan

Ústí nad Labem - Members of the association Stop Tunnels filed a criminal complaint regarding the zoning plan of Ústí nad Labem. They suspect that the city violated the public procurement law, resulting in damage of around three million crowns. This was reported by the spokesperson of the initiative, Jan Kvapil, to ČTK.
According to him, they have evidence of the illegality of the tender for the documentation of the zoning plan, which they published on their website. "We obtained the first indications from the minutes of the City Council, and according to the law on free access to information, we requested additional documents from the Ministry for Regional Development. It then became clear that the city violated the public procurement law," Kvapil stated. They filed the criminal complaint against an unknown perpetrator on Monday at the Ústí District Prosecutor's Office. The city’s statement is being verified by ČTK.
Due to errors in the tender process, the ministry also rejected the city's request for a three-million crown grant for the new zoning plan, according to Kvapil. "In our opinion, this non-standard tender process is also behind the extraordinarily high acquisition cost of the new zoning plan, which has no parallel even in Czech conditions," Kvapil added.
According to published documents, officials from the Ministry for Regional Development inspected the city regarding this public procurement as early as January 2010. In August of last year, the ministry dealt with the city's objections to the results of the inspection, where in a protocol published by the association, the ministry criticized the procedures of the evaluation committee. According to the protocol, for example, the city modified the terms of the public procurement only after receiving the bids. Initially, it stipulated that the amount of the contractual penalty would have a thirty-percent weight when selecting the winner of the public procurement, but then it paid less attention to it.
"Bidders should have been disqualified from the committees when assessing bids, and their proposals should not have been evaluated. Failure to adhere to the specified procedure affected the determination of the most advantageous offer," states the protocol. The selected firm, Arcadius Casua, determined that the amount of the contractual penalty could only be up to 15 percent of the total price. The ministry also points out other shortcomings by the city.
The zoning plan processed by the selected firm was approved by the councilors on December 15 of last year, with 22 councilors voting in favor, none against, and eight abstaining. Citizens present at the meeting pointed out procedural deficiencies, insufficient public debate, lack of responses to comments, and among other things, the cost of acquiring the plan. The city paid 30 million crowns for it. The Stop Tunnels initiative presented the councilors with a list of twelve cities of similar size to Ústí nad Labem that acquired zoning plans often for half or less.
At that time, the Social Democracy party pushed for the then Deputy Mayor Jan Řeřicha (ODS) to immediately start working on a new transport concept of the zoning plan. It should be completed by June 30, 2013, but Řeřicha was dismissed by the councilors in mid-March.